Lost in the expansion talk and commitment from Bill Belton, was the second commitment Pitt received from wide receiver Justin Olack.
Turns out he had a few more offers than I initially mentioned. Illinois, Marshall, and Ohio also offered him in addition to the list I posted yesterday. And I found this page out there yesterday, that listed the schools he was interested in. I believe Pitt and Indiana were the only ones on his list that had offered scholarships.
Olack didn't want to wait around with the offer on the table:
“I didn’t want to make the mistake of trying to wait it out and try to get more schools, and then this opportunity just goes away,” Olack said Friday evening. “I didn’t want to pass it up.”His 2009 numbers were fairly modest, but that could be partially due to a transition he made from quarterback to wide receiver and an injury:
“Overall, I thought it was pretty easy,” Olack said. “I used to play a little bit of receiver, but mainly I was just a quarterback. Everybody, coming up through middle school and everything, thought I should be a receiver. The hardest thing was probably just getting the routes down good. Over the season and over the winter, my speed has increased a lot throughout track and it should get better this season.”Not to mention an injury:
“It felt like I could run better routes and just find a better hole to get open,” Olack said. “Even though, after the first McKinley game, I played those last games with cracked ribs.”
The jury is still out on him to a degree and it will be interesting to see what kind of senior season he has this year. I do think the position change and injury hindered his numbers and he could be in for a breakout season this year.
