Hogs go heavy for cornerbacks in transfer portal

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas was busy adding pieces to the secondary this recruiting season and Sam Pittman was hoping to develop depth and competition there.

Arkansas signed Oklahoma’s Kani Walker, 6-2, 201; Northwest Mississippi Community College’s Keshawn Davila, 6-1, 165; Cincinnati’s Jordan Young, 6-0, 203; and then in the 10-day window just closed Stanford’s Julian Neal, 6-2, 200. Walker, Davila and Young signed at midterm. Injuries prevented Young from practicing this spring, but he also said during the recruiting process he would play any spot in the secondary and not just cornerback.

These newcomers are competing with sophomore Selman Bridges, 6-2, 181, and redshirt junior Jaheim Singletary, 6-2, 196, among others for playing time. Pittman talked about depth in the secondary and hoping the versatility extends beyond just cornerback.

“Yeah, and then you have to think about which one of those guys — if they’re not starting at corner,” Pittman said. “You know, you look at a board and you’re going, ‘Man, do we need to be two deep.’ And that’s true. But if my third-best corner is my backup boundary safety. So we brought in body types that were strictly corner and we brought in body types that were corner, boundary safety, Hog. Where we were depleted was the secondary. And so we wanted to be right on whom chose us and who we chose.

“But we also wanted to make sure that, you know, look back at Hudson Clark. And Hudson Clark, I mean, he caught a lot of hell while he was here, and he saved us in so many ways. It was corner, it was safety, it was, you know what I mean? And he had a lot of value. So that was our thinking, to bring in some true corners, and then some guys that were corners who could also play another position. And so that’s where we’re at right now. We’ll kind of figure a little bit more of that out over the summer and then fall camp.”

The Razorbacks open the season on Saturday, Aug. 30, against Alabama A&M in Fayetteville.