OT Casey Poe (6-5 280) of Lindale, TX made the long ride to Clemson over the weekend so that he could attend the junior day and meet in person with offensive line coach Thomas Austin and head coach Dabo Swinney. It helped that Poe has family in Buford, GA, so that gave the family kind of a staging area before they went off for visits to Tigertown Saturday and Georgia Tech Sunday.
“Being able to finally get to Clemson was big,” Poe said. “Driving in, it’s kind of tucked back in its own little corner of the world. You’re driving through a lot of little backroads and backstreets and all of a sudden boom, here’s a stadium and beautiful campus. It was surreal but it was very nice to finally be able to get on campus and see everything. We were there for a total of 13 hours on that junior day. They took us all around. They showed us the stadium. They showed us the new Tiger Walk they are putting in. They showed us all the different academic buildings. The golf course, the baseball and softball fields. They did a great job showing us everything.”
The visit also gave Poe the chance to spend a lot of time with Austin so the two of them could take their recruiting relationship to that next level.
“Coach Austin was there for the entire day. I think I talked to him almost more than anybody else there,” Poe said. “We talked about everything Clemson, how things work around there, their expectations. Besides that, just kind of building a relationship. He talked about his family and I talked about my family.”
Poe, of course, didn’t leave campus with some time with Swinney. Swinney had to break away for the funeral for linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr.’s mother, but the time he got to spend with the head coach was important.
“When he came back, there was only a group of eight of us, so he got us all together in a room with our parents,” Poe said. “I think it was an hour and a half long and he talked to us about everything about Clemson, about his backstory, about his life. It was really cool. It was really insightful.”
The result of his day at Clemson, an offer from the Tigers and their emergence in his recruiting plans.
“They are definitely in the running for sure,” Poe said.
Poe also has visited TCU, Oklahoma, LSU and Texas A&M. He is going to Auburn and Georgia in the next couple of days. Georgia offered Sunday night. He will visit Baylor and Texas Tech at the end of the month, and to Alabama in April.
He does plan to return to Clemson at some point but is not sure if that will be for an official visit. He will make his decision before his season.
Some of his other offers include Arkansas, BYU, Michigan State and Stanford.
