How Eric Hickson’s time at Akron could help Miami land an elite legacy recruiting target
Like it was for just about everyone who follows the Miami Hurricanes, the penultimate day of 2018 was weird for Mark-Antony Richards. He didn’t see coach Mark Richt’s retirement coming and it caught the whole family — including Ahmmon Richards — off guard. For about 12 hours, Richards wasn’t sure if Miami would still be part of his top five as he approached a February college decision.
“I talked with my dad about it, I told my mom about it and they all said, ‘You serious?’” Richards said Tuesday. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, he just retired,’ and they were like, ‘Now what,’ so I was like, ‘I don’t know.’”
By the end of the night, Richards’ doubts had been assuaged. The Hurricanes announced Manny Diaz as their new coach and Richards knew Miami was back in the thick of his recruitment.
The No. 99 overall prospect in the 247Sports.com composite rankings, Richards was one of the first recruits Diaz reached out to and the four-star athlete from Wellington committed to taking an official visit. Now his official visit is here. The senior will take his fifth and final official visit this weekend to Coral Gables, where his older brother was a star wide receiver before suffering a career-ending injury last season.
After his upcoming visit, Richards will have a week to host in-home visits with his top five teams — the Hurricanes, Florida Gators, Auburn Tigers, Penn State Nittany Lions and, newly, the Georgia Bulldogs — before he signs his National Letter of Intent on National Signing Day next month.
Diaz already took his in-home visit with Richards last Wednesday and brought with him a new weapon in Miami’s recruitment of the elite prospect. New running backs coach Eric Hickson was one of the first coaches to recruit Richards back when the assistant coach was with the Akron Zips.
Even when Hickson left for the Kansas State Wildcats and stopped actively recruiting Richards, the two kept in touch.
“Once he got hired, he texted me and was like, ‘You know I’m at Miami now,” Richards said. “I was like, ‘Oh, snap.’”
If the Hurricanes manage to beat out Florida, Auburn and Penn State to land Richards, Hickson will be a major reason. Unlike some of Richards’ other suitors, Miami hasn’t always envisioned the 6-1, 195-pound athlete as a running back. The Hurricanes offered Richards scholarship in 2016, envisioning him primarily as a safety. Until Richards’ senior season, Miami pitched him on being either a defensive back or an athlete in the mold of DeeJay Dallas, who now plays running back.
With Hickson in the fold, the Hurricanes have a coach Richards knows is being honest about his evaluation.
“First and foremost, he preaches the truth,” said Richards, who played running back and cornerback for the Wolves last season. “I know like a lot of people probably are wondering why I’m playing running back at the next level, but he’s one of the very few coaches who truly know why. If you do something all your life, you’re not going to like switch at it because if you don’t love doing it, you’re not going to want to do it and he understands that completely, so really that wasn’t a question at all.”
Richards’ time being recruited for defense, however, has one major benefit for Miami. Richards has a solid relationship with Diaz from when the new coach was the Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator, trying to convince Richards to play for him during the first half of the tailback’s high school career.
Richards has gotten a good look at how Diaz changed the identity of Miami’s defense and it gives him optimism about the program as a whole.
“He truly changed the face of the Miami defense, if you really think about it,” Richards said. “Now that he’s the head coach and stuff like that, I can only imagine how he’s going to change the offense.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 9:59 AM.