Auburn signees Jawara White (left) and Kenneth Carter were part of Wednesday’s event at WSFA. (Staff Photo)

Combined Reports
(Feb. 4, 2010)

In the state of Alabama, Nick Saban restocked the defending champion Crimson Tide with another class the recruiting gurus loved. No surprise there.

But it was Auburn and second-year coach Gene Chizik that made the biggest splash, securing a class rated in the top 10 nationally.

"This was a great day for Auburn,” Chizik said. “A year ago at this time, literally a year ago on this day, we came together and we really laid down a vision for what we wanted to try to do for the next recruiting year. When we came in last year, it was a different scenario because we had about three weeks to recruit our class. This year, we’ve had a full year. When I say that we had a vision, we had a blueprint of what we needed at Auburn. I’ve said this so many times, but it’s not about getting the best player. We obviously want the best player, but he also has to be the right player. I think our coaches did a great job and we did a great job of evaluating not only talent, but the mark of a man that we wanted to bring in to represent this university, our football program and the Auburn Family. I am as much or more proud of that as I am with the talent that we recruited with this class.”

Auburn was ranked fourth by Rivals and ESPNU. The Tigers also received top 5 rankings by other polls including Scout.

"It’s nice that on this day that the class, by the people that are `experts’ or along the lines know that this is a good class, but anyone that knows football knows that it will be two or three seasons away before you can judge the class,” Chizik said. “I feel good for our coaches, the Auburn Family and the people that worked so hard right now during this past year to make this recruiting class special. I feel good that people can look at that and others can recognize how hard our people worked, but at the end of the day, those rankings really won’t pan out for a few years where in terms of how good the classes really were."

The headliner came from junior college. Former Florida quarterback Cameron Newton, who left the Gators after getting into legal trouble off the field, could start for the Tigers this fall.

Several local players were included in the class including Greenville defensive tackle Kenneth Carter and Jawara White of Charles Henderson High School.

“I liked Auburn from the beginning,” White said. “It’s a great school and I love the coaches there.”

Auburn added defensive end Corey Lemonier to an already strong class on Wednesday.

"We had a great hope for what Corey would do today,” Chizik said. “Corey’s a great young man and he had so many great choices out there. We really felt like he had whittled it down to two. We really felt like that was a situation that could have gone either way, but we hung in there and we fought and clawed our way down to the very end. It was a situation that we weren’t necessarily 100 percent sure. We had an idea."