Getty Image / Kevin Abele
Landing 5-star recruits is nothing new for the University of Arizona.
Their basketball program has made a habit of bringing in some of the nation’s top recruits and has frequently produced top 10 picks while also regularly finishing in the top 25.
Things work a bit differently in the football program.
The football program just doesn’t land recruits of that caliber and has struggled to get results in recent years.
Their last season with a record of .500 or better came back in 2017.
Today they got some big news that looks like it could help change the fortunes of the struggling football team in a big way.
5-star edge rusher Elijah Rushing posted a video to Youtube earlier today to announce that he would be committing to play college football for the Arizona Wildcats.
The announcement https://t.co/InINSs1Qdp
— Elijah Rushing (@elijah_rushing) July 6, 2023
Rushing is the highest-rated recruit the Wildcats have landed in the modern ranking era and they beat out quite a bit of tough competition for him.
The rest of Rushing’s final list of teams was made up of a bunch of much more highly-regarded football programs. The other 3 teams on the list were Tennessee, Oregon, and Notre Dame.
It seems the allure of playing for one of these bigger schools couldn’t beat out the appeal of getting to play in front of a hometown crowd for the Tucson native.
Rushing is currently a top 20 recruit in the country for the Class of 2024 and the top recruit from his home state.
Rushing will join a program that had one of the nation’s worst defenses this past season. They were 126th in the country out of 131 teams in points allowed with an average of 36.5 per game.
The Arizona Wildcats will be hoping that adding an impact player like Elijah Rushing will help them turn that struggling defense around.