OT Casey Poe (6-5 280) of Lindale, TX is sticking to his schedule for official visits, so his third trip will be this weekend at Texas Tech. Georgia drew his first stop in May, and last weekend Clemson was the location. Auburn, Alabama and Oklahoma are still to come.
Poe said he had a great time on his Clemson visit and the Tigers checked one of the major boxes for him that he is evaluating at all his stops.
“Something that really stood out for me, if you’re doing the official visits right, you want to find out if a school is being real or not, whether they’re really showing their face when they recruit you send you graphics, that’s what you need to be looking for,” Poe said. “I think Clemson is exactly what people say it is. The reputation they have for having a great culture and a great personnel and staff and having a staff who really cares about their players instead of just kind of trying to pump out wins or the best players, they really care about the people. Of course, they still have a great culture, they’re still grinding and trying to win a championship every single year, but I feel like it’s exactly how it’s portrayed in the media is exactly how it is on campus.”
Poe said the weekend also gave him the chance to spend a lot of time with offensive line coach Thomas Austin and to continue building the relationship with him.
“During the scavenger hunt, I was able to spend time with him because I was on his golf cart,” he said. “Besides that, he really hung out with us. He did a great job recruiting us throughout the weekend. He also did a really great job building a relationship with each offensive lineman that was there. There was a lot of really good talent, and there were people he was gunning for, but he did a great job building a relationship outside of the recruiting aspect.”
As the other schools host Poe moving forward, they will also put their best foot forward to try to impress him. Poe said Clemson not only put their best foot forward, they took a major leap with him.
“I think a great way to sum that up is a headline of an article I saw that was something like, ‘Clemson moving the needle themselves.’ They did a really good job of moving that needle and pushing it up,” he said. “They’re definitely going to be in consideration. They’re sitting very high right now. We’ll just see where it goes from there.”
