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College Football

Getting to know five-star SEC recruit Lyndell “Mack” Wilson

Chris Wuensch

By Chris Wuensch

Published:

SEC battles aren’t reserved solely for the gridiron. All too often they spill onto the recruiting trail.

Lyndell “Mack” Wilson is getting his first taste of SEC competition as Alabama and Georgia (and formerly Florida) have gone all-in on the five-star linebacker from Carver-Montgomery (Ala.) High School.

Exactly where in the SEC Wilson lands won’t be made public until Feb. 3’s National Signing Day, when he unveils his choice at 1 p.m. EST on ESPN2. What we do know, however, is that Wilson’s family is going to be a major influence in his decision in his new home.

HE RECENTLY MADE THE SWITCH TO LB

Wilson began his career as a quarterback, switching to defense his sophomore year. At 6-foot, 3-inches tall and 230 pounds, he was an instant success on the other side of the ball, registering three sacks in his first game at the same alma mater as Auburn quarterback Jeremy Johnson.

“We noticed a lot early in the season that teams were game-planning to do some things to run away from him and throw away from him,” Carver head coach Billy Gresham said of Wilson via AL.com. “We put him at middle linebacker, where it’s really hard to game plan for a middle linebacker, because he can be all over the place. His pass coverage is really good and we can blitz him from inside and do some things with him on the edge rushing. We thought we could put him in a better position to be successful on the inside.”

Gresham’s hunch was correct. Wilson finished with 250 career tackles, 18.5 sacks (7.0 his senior year) and five forced fumbles. He earned a five-star rating after being named linebackers MVP at last summer’s Rivals’ 5-star Challenge. He concluded the season as a USA Today All-USA First Teamer, ranked No. 15 overall in the country among recruits and No. 2 in both the state of Alabama and among outside linebackers. He also has a 3.5 GPA in the classroom, to boot.

Here he is simultaneously sacking a quarterback and an offensive lineman.

HE WON’T BE PLAYING FOR FLORIDA

Florida head coach Jim McElwain might have let one get away and for the simple reason of glossing over a major element in Wilson’s life: his mother. Wilson scratched the Gators from atop his destination list and cancelled his Gainesville visit in a since-been-deleted Tweet after McElwain and his staff failed to reach out to his mother. Wilson had clearly bought into the Florida hype. He thought he’d found a home and an ideal place to pursue a sports management degree. The evidence was everywhere, from the Gator chomp he did after receiving his Under Armour All-American jersey to the Gator chomp his did after this particularly nasty hit.

HE GREW UP AN ALABAMA FAN

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Wilson’s Twitter page is riddled with everything Alabama. He did, after all, grow up just some 100 miles from Bryant-Denny Stadium. “All my family grew up Alabama fans,” Wilson said via AL.com. “I’m still an Alabama fan but taking everything in. I’m going to take visits and see how everything goes. Just because they’re my favorite school and I grew up liking them, doesn’t mean I’m going to go there. I’ll take everything in and see what I’ll do.” Auburn recruited him hard, but fell off the table when Will Muschamp left the Tigers for South Carolina at season’s end. Alabama head coach Nick Saban seized upon this, even taking time to do what McElwain and Florida neglected to do:

“Growing up, my father really wasn’t there because he was locked up in jail a lot, and I really grew up around my mother,” Wilson said via AL.com. “I felt her pain because she was raising four kids at the time, she was a single mom working. It really was a struggle for me. Some nights we didn’t have any food and had to eat at grandma’s house. Sometimes I didn’t have clothes or shoes. But I wasn’t mad about it or anything, because I had a single parent who was doing her best to raise me.” The Alabama head coach and Wilson eventually became dancing partners during an official visit and the Crimson Tide racked up a 92 percent chance, according to 247Sports, of landing the player that will likely get a chance to choose which linebacker position he plays — or so Wilson has stated.

Is it enough to land Wilson in Tuscaloosa? Probably, but there’s one little wildcard…

HE’S REALLY CLOSE TO THIS GUY NAMED KIRBY

While Alabama and Florida duked it out for Wilson’s services, Kirby Smart and Georgia quietly snuck in and could pull of a signing-day coup. Wilson and Smart have become close in recent years dating back to when the new Bulldog head coach was defensive coordinator at Alabama. “Kirby and I are real close,” Wilson said via Dawgnation.com. “He’s real comfortable around me and I am really comfortable around him. He just walked up to me one time and said I had the chance to really be something special. That’s when he was recruiting Shaun Dion Hamilton (also of Carver) to Alabama.”

Wilson went on to tell online Athens that Smart is “like a father figure to me. I feel like I can talk to him about anything.”

Those are powerful words. Whether their enough to get Wilson in a Bulldogs uniform will remain a mystery until Wednesday on ESPN2.

Chris Wuensch

Chris Wuensch is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers South Carolina and Tennessee.

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