Early on Sunday morning, Iowa picked up a verbal commitment from a Detroit DB, Desmond King. This is King's 3rd time giving a verbal commitment. He was previously committed to Central Michigan (at least we can still beat them in recruiting, right?), then to Ball State, and now to the Hawkeyes. This close to signing day it's unlikely he has time to switch again.
Iowa has a proud tradition of offering MAC commits late in the process and stealing them away. Kevonte Martin-Manley is a recent example...he was committed to Bowling Green before switching to the Hawkeyes. Iowa has also been pretty successful in the Detroit area the past few years. Ruben Lile, Carl Davis, and Laron Taylor are all from Detroit, while Jake Duzey, Martin-Manley, and Kevin Buford are from nearby suburbs. Credit goes to Phil Parker for recruiting most of these Michigan guys.
King is rated 3-stars by all the services and had offers from basically every MAC school, plus Indiana and Wisconsin. In high school he played both sides of the ball and was very successful as a running back and a defensive back. This past season, King ran for 2,368 yards and 32 TDs on offense and had 7 interceptions (2 returned for TDs) on D. In his high school career he finished with 29 INTs (he had 12 as a junior and 10 as a sophomore), a state of Michigan record.
He looks good with the ball in his hands and is a decent kick/punt returner. Though Micah Hyde never really took off as a returner, it did seem like Kirk Ferentz fell in love with the idea of keeping the base D out there on 4th down and just dropping Hyde back as the returner...no substitutions necessary. So maybe that's a role King can fill in the future.
The depth at secondary took a hit at the end of 2012 with Hyde, Colin Sleeper, and Greg Castillo (and Jack Swanson, I guess) all finishing their careers. Iowa does have some young talent in Buford, Sean Draper, and Nico Law, plus King is coming in with 3 other projected DBs: Solomon Warfield, Derrick Mitchell, and Malik Rucker. So there should be some healthy competition for playing time over the next few years.
Anyway, I'm glad to have Desmond on board, and look forward to see who else the Hawks get in the next week and a half before signing day.