medical hardship
Michigan's receiver corps once the Collins-DPJ-Black era ends was already shaky before Oliver Martin's painful departure. Now things are even slimmer after one of their three outside receiver recruits in the last two cycles announced he'll lose at least a season to a "medical finding":
— Q (@Quintelkent1) August 5, 2019
That's pretty vague, and a lot of things can turn up in a physical, from improperly healed old injuries that require surgery, to heart conditions. Here's hoping it's just the former.
Kent was a late find out of Lakewood St. Ed's, an power private school near Cleveland. The few eyes we got on him saw an extremely good route runner with elite acceleration off the line and strong footwork—the kind of prospect who doesn't look like much in testing numbers or generate many stars from the industry, but produces early and often in college. He also was a willing blocker. I'm guessing his YMRMFSPA was going to be Roy Roundtree, a guy whose name peppers Michigan's career, season, and game record books, and a guy who featured in many of the greatest highlights of his era. Any stargazer who thinks this isn't a big loss because of recruiting rankings has no idea what they're talking about.
It's not clear if this affects Kent just this year or his entire career. If you take a medical scholarship you can't come and play football again, and it seems from the tweet that Michigan and Kent aren't ready to make it permanent yet. It's a small bummer to lose a down-roster true freshman at a strong position this year, but it would be a huge one to lose a receiver for 2020 if the NFL takes the kind of bite out of the depth chart we expect it to. After DPJ, Collins and Black, Michigan has just Ronnie Bell from the 2018 class, Cornelius Johnson from this one, and the slots and guys they're recruiting now. Also the likelihood that Erick All stays at receiver just ticked up a notch.
Michigan's spring roster hit yesterday with only one surprise: redshirt sophomore cornerback Benjamin St-Juste was not on it. An insider posted to our message board, and 247’s Steve Lorenz confirmed last night that St-Juste has asked for and received a medical hardship waiver, meaning he can continue to receive financial aid but his career is done (and he no longer counts against the scholarship limit).
It’s a bummer since Michigan liked St-Juste enough his freshman year to go on a tall defensive back recruiting binge in the class after. An unknown Quebecois prospect who flew up the recruiting rankings after appearing at The Opening, St-Juste was the first of the many lengthy, bendy, hip-swingy cornerback prospects that Michigan began recruiting in earnest after the staff saw what Jeremy Clark (or Richard Sherman for the Stanford alums) could do. Michigan spotted the Canadian in the summer of 2015, but St-Juste chose to delay his matriculation to 2017 (Canadian high schools have 13 grades). The 247 and Rivals scouts used that year to catch up, skeptical Scout.com was folded into 247, and that’s how a guy from the land of Emmanuel Casseuses arrived as a 19-year-old composite four-star.
St-Juste was on track to pay that off; he got on the field in 12 games as a freshman in 2017, mostly on special teams as Lavert Hill, David Long, and Brandon Watson dominated playing time, and classmate Ambry Thomas was a more polished true freshman prospect. But St-Juste battled injuries all last season, and apparently that was going to continue.
St-Juste was the tallest and most exciting of his ilk, but thanks to the 2018 class Michigan has more St-Juste-like (Jeremy Clarketypes?) redshirt freshmen on the roster that you can fit in a midsize SUV, plus a pair of more cornerbackian true freshmen and a preferred walk-on (Hunter Reynolds) who was last year’s scout team player of the year to compete behind projected starters Lavert Hill and Ambry Thomas.
[Bryan Fuller]
Yesterday's recruiting profile was unfortunately prescient, as Corey Malone-Hatcher announced on twitter that he will take a medical hardship and retire from football due to a chronic Achilles injury:
"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is gods will for you in Christ Jesus" ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 pic.twitter.com/CUqafWgvgI
— Threes (@CMH2017) July 4, 2017
Malone-Hatcher enrolled early and went through spring practice; as a freshman he obviously had no opportunity to see playing time. Michigan will go forward with Luiji Vilain, Kwity Paye, Deron Irving-Bey, and Donovan Jeter as freshman WDE/SDE, though the latter two might end up moving inside.
19