Ah, June. It's time for bar-b-ques, baseball games and football camp commits. Iowa's first foray into the June recruiting pool landed one particularly large fish: Interior offensive lineman Spencer Williams, a 275-lb. junior at Cedar Falls High. Williams received a three-star grade from 247 and two stars from Rivals. He's ranked as somewhere between the third- and fifth-best prospect in the state of Iowa for 2016. Williams had previously committed to Western Michigan, and also held offers from Colorado State, Florida Atlantic and a handful of FCS programs. That handful includes Harvard, Yale and Cornell, guaranteeing that Kirk Ferentz mentions Matt Birk during the 2016 Signing Day press conference.
Here's his Hudl highlight video. A word of warning: The music in it is so atrocious that it literally scared my dog out of his nap.
Andrew Kuhla from 247 got an interview with Williams following his commitment, and he sounds committed to the cause. "They've just been my dream school forever," Williams said. "I just love the school. I love the coaches. I love the Hawks, man." He's the first offensive lineman to commit to Iowa this season. Iowa's staff reportedly projects him as a center.
Williams becomes the fifth commitment in Iowa's 2016 class, the first from the state of Iowa in a particularly poor year for in-state recruiting. Nevertheless, Iowa reportedly offered four scholarships after Sunday's one-day camp, all to in-state recruits. None of them had an offer better than Iowa State. Williams' high school teammate, wide receiver Javon Middleton, has received reported interest from LSU, Florida and Oregon, and could be an eventual Iowa target. Nevertheless, with this staff's recently-increased reliance on in-state players, locking Iowa recruits down early could help free resources to pursue bigger targets in other areas.