By David McCollum thecabin.net Copyright 2012 The Cabin. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

University of Central Arkansas coach Clint Conque used a baseball term to describe his recruiting class Wednesday, one of the most athletic and probably the highest-rated group in history.

Conque announced the addition of 23 new players, including three mid-year transfers. They included five defensive linemen, three wide receivers, three linebackers, two offensive linemen, two cornerbackers, two safeties, two tight ends, one running back, one quarterback and two players who were described as athletes because of their ability to play multiple positions.

“I felt we hit a home run at tight end and linebacker,” he said during a news conference Wednesday. “I felt it was critical to have success at linebacker.

“Safeties are hard to come by and I felt we did real well there, too.”

The mid-year transfers include Jacoby Walker, a quarterback from the University of Arkansas, Austin Haywood, a tight end form Oklahoma, and Courtney Whitehead, a wide receiver from the Air Force Academy.

“We went after a few transfers at positions we felt we needed immediate help,” he said. “At the FCS level, they don’t have to sit out a year. We don’t pass up a great player, if they can fulfill a need.”

The Bears are coming off a 9-4 season and reaching the second round of the NCAA FCS playoffs in only their second year of eligibility or postseason. 

Conque, beginning his 13th season with the Bears, said the UCA coaches laid out ambitious goals for potential recruits.

“Consistency of our program was a big factor in our success,” Conque said. “I think players saw our vision. They want to compete at the national level. Our goal is to win a national championship on the Division I FCS level. Our goal is not to go to the GoDaddy.com Bowl or the Papa John’s Pizza Bowl. We want to play for a national championshiop and I think our young men like the opportunity to do that. It can be done but you have to have players who want to be here, are passionate, are invested and naturally, have ability.”

He commended his assistants for doing an “unbelievable job of holding most of these recruits to their commitments.”

He added, “there were a lot of hours of evaluation; a lot of phone calls and no plane trips on this cycle,” he said. “It was old-fashioned rubber hitting the highway. I think we got athletes at every position to fufill immediate needs, future needs and to add depth and competition in practice.”

He said the coaches developed a profile for recruits based on ability, academic match and needs.

“We open with Ole Miss next season; we want players who will help us win that game,” he said. “Our athletes know they are to a school where academics and getting a degree are important. It was important for us to meet the familites. I was in 20 of the 23 homes of recruits and we had assistant coaches in the homes of the other three.”

A few of the recruits chose UCA after other campus visits.

From feedback, he said the contributing factors to the decision by the recruits and their families were: the immediate success of the program and last season’s NCAa playoff run, the vision articulated for the future, the facilities (with a striped field, a new strength and conditioning center and skyboxesw going up) and the academic emphasis.

“If we can get the parents on campus, we are hard to beat because they are impressed with our academic success,” he said. “And our stripes are still in. Our recruits told us they liked our overall commitment and expectations and that we are a solid university that is 105 years old and one of the best-kept secrets in the Mid-South, I think.”

UCA signed 11 players from Texas, seven from Arkansas, two each from Oklahoma and Louisiana and one from Tennessee.

One of the recruits, Tony Truoung of Carrolton, Texas, has Vietnamese parents who do not speak English.

During a home visit, Conque and assistant Jerry Hammock, asked his mother to cook them an authentic Vietnamese meal.

“I had no idea what we ate, but it meant so much to that family that we accepted their culture,” Conque said.

Now, it’s a matter of the new recruits adapting to the Bears’ culture.