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For the first two years of his high school career at Southington High School in Connecticut, Jay Rose played tight end and began garnering national recruiting attention. Then, in his junior year, Rose switched to playing quarterback and passed for over 3,000 yards & 47 touchdowns and started being recruited potentially as a quarterback as well. By the end of his junior year Rose had at least nine offers from Power 5 conference schools.
In mid-August, Jay trimmed his list of schools to Connecticut, Syracuse, Wake Forest & Wisconsin. Wisconsin & Wake Forest were recruiting Rose solely as a tight end. Connecticut & Syracuse, however, are willing to at least give Rose the opportunity to play QB. That opportunity to play QB seemingly made the difference to Rose who will verbally commit to either the Syracuse Orange or the Connecticut Huskies on Thursday.
In his first game with Southington this year, Rose threw for 303 yards and six touchdowns in a 54-9 win. Rose is the rated the 9th best recruit in Connecticut by both Rivals & 24/7. Syracuse has recently recruited a few players out of Connecticut each year, including Ervin Phillips, Evan Adams and Anthony Giudice. An upcoming series with UConn could enable Syracuse to ramp up its recruiting efforts in the state.
If Rose were to commit to Syracuse he would be the second QB and the 15th commit of the 2016 Class, counting Brandon Ginnetti from the 2015 class. Tampa QB Rex Culpepper committed back in June and is currently rehabbing from a torn ACL and plans on being on campus in the spring.
Syracuse has four other scholarship QBs on the roster in Terrel Hunt, Austin Wilson, AJ Long and Eric Dungey, assuming Kenterius Womack's transition to wide receiver is a permanent one. Syracuse also has walk-on Zach Mahoney on campus. Obviously, whether Hunt will be on the roster next year depends on whether the NCAA grants him a medical redshirt waiver.
Stay tuned to see if Syracuse can pick up another verbal commitment this Thursday.