Sam Pittman, Hogs balance recruiting with bowl prep

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman and his staff have had to juggle recruiting the transfer portal with preparing for Friday’s AutoZone Liberty Bowl against Texas Tech.

Pittman and the team arrived in Memphis on Monday afternoon. Pittman was asked about having to recruit the portal while preparing for the bowl game.

“You know it’s been busy,” Pittman said. “At the same time, I thought last year was worse. I did. I’m talking about we weren’t in a bowl, we weren’t around our kids, they were home for Christmas. So I’ve really, really enjoyed these, I think it might be eight now, eight practices that we’ve had with these guys. Sometimes they’re not playing on a Saturday, so you — you don’t forget about them, but you don’t learn as much about them. And I’ve really enjoyed that part of it.

“Has it been busy? Yes. I mean, very, very busy. We’ve signed 15, I think, portal guys and all that and getting ready for a good Texas Tech team. I think everybody in the country’s doing it to some degree. But it has been busy. And throw the hip in, just the nagging part of that. All that stuff has been difficult, but at the same time, I really like where we are right now, today, be it with our football team, with the portal, our situation there, and with the game coming up. I’m pleased with what our coaching staff, our players have done to this point.”

Pittman had hip replacement surgery shortly after the season ended. He is progressing from that surgery.

“Man, I can walk without a cane about 20 yards maybe?,” Pittman said. “I’m going to have it on the sideline just, I don’t know, maybe it’s a security blanket, maybe I need it, I don’t know, but I’m sleeping a lot better. If I knew then what I knew now, 20 days after the total hip, I would have just bit the bullet late June when I found out and would have been able to be more active during the season. I feel like I’m getting there and I appreciate you asking the question.”

Pittman currently has signed 15 recruits from the transfer portal. He talked about how he feels it has gone.

“I’m going to move this over here to look at it a little bit because there’s several here,” Pittman said. “If you look at offensively, I think we’ve really enhanced our team in the portal with O-linemen. That was a key. We still have another one we need to get, but we’ve had four there. We’ve got a running back. Braylen Russell, he’s going to play, he’s here. So that’s been back and forth there, but we’re glad to have him. Three wide receivers to this point and a tight end. I still think we need to add to that tight end group, and add to the offensive line. We need another tackle, I think.

“And then defensively, I think Deke’s (Adams) really done a nice job with that, adding three d-linemen. A couple of rush ends and an interior, and then we’ve added two corners, a safety and a hog. Probably need to get another safety, and possibly another corner out of the portal. I still think that we’re still probably somewhere between 4-and-6 additions out of the portal, and we’ll take our time there. 

“We have done pretty well coming out of the portal in April. We’ve hit in the April portal, as well, so I do want to save a scholarship or two. But as you well know, the portal opens, so people are going to leave, so I don’t want to save too many because obviously, if someone’s not playing at the end of spring ball, we’ll probably have a scholarship available to go into the portal.”

Of the four offensive linemen signed three of them are tackles. Caden Kitler is a center. Does Pittman plan to move some inside?

“I think the old philosophy, which was mine, was to get big, and if they didn’t have the quite the feet or the space, couldn’t handle space, you move them in to guard,” Pittman said. “That’s a hard philosophy to move into center. Obviously, we’ve got the one young man that started at center this year that’s coming into the program.

“So we have three tackles, three basic tackles. Well, two of them have got to play tackle. They’re huge.  The other one could be a guard or tackle, and then we’ve got a center. We have availability on our offensive line to move some guys around and move them inside. We have some guys that can play center that have been playing outside. We’ll just have to look to get our five best on the field at the same time. I do like the guys that we went out in the portal and have signed to this point. I think they’ll help us. Our next one could be another big tackle, could be another guy that could snap the football.”

Pittman is expecting all 15 they have signed and any future additions to come in and compete for playing time immediately.

“I think the majority of the guys that we’re bringing in, we’re counting on them to play,” Pittman said. “They have to earn every bit of that, but we’re certainly recruiting them to come in and play immediately. Now they gotta beat out whomever’s on the team, but there are a few of them that are younger that we feel like we can develop where we need numbers as well. But each and every one of them have the opportunity to play and we feel like every guy that we’ve taken besides just a very very small amount has shown us they can play in the college level and play at a high rate, or obviously we wouldn’t have went after them.”

Arkansas’ Portal Class

Mike Washington, RB, 6-2, 228, New Mexico State
Raylen Sharpe, WR, 5-9, 165, Fresno State
Kam Shanks, WR, 5-8, 180, UAB
O’Mega Blake, WR, 6-2, 180, Charlotte
Jaden Platt, TE, 6-5, 260, Texas A&M
Kavion Broussard, OL, 6-6, 300, Ole Miss
JacQawn McRoy, OT, 6-8, 375, Oregon
Corey Robinson, OT, 6-5, 305, Georgia Tech
Caden Kitler, C, 6-3, 295, UCF
Ken Talley, DE, 6-3, 256, Michigan State
Justus Boone, DE, 6-4, 266, Florida
David Oke, DT, 6-2, 295, Abilene Christian
Kani Walker, CB, 6-2, 206, Oklahoma
Quentavius Scandrett, S, 6-2, 200, Eastern Michigan
Jordan Young, DB, 6-0, 197, Cincinnati