USC Football: Su’A Cravens commits to USC

Su'A Cravens committing to USC. Photo tweeted by Lindsay Thiry of Scout.com

On Wednesday, the Trojans added another top recruit to the ranks with the commitment of

Su’A Cravens

. Cravens is the No. 1 ranked safety and no. 8 athlete overall according to Rivals.com, and comes in at No. 4 overall on ESPNU’s 150.

Before Cravens made his announcement Scout.com reporter Lindsay Thiry tweeted this picture of the ceiling of Cravens garage, which has all of his recruitment letters:

Cravens had narrowed his decision down to Ohio State, Michigan, UCLA and USC, but it was the cardinal and gold Trojans that he would give his commitment to. Cravens announced his decision from the garage of his home in Temecula, CA, on his mother’s birthday. He gave USC a bit of a scare earlier this month when he had planned to visit Ohio State and Michigan again, but those trips were later cancelled. This move was kind of expected, as Cravens was considered a “USC lock” by some recruiting experts. Greg Biggins, the national recruiting coordinator for Scout.com said he “would be shocked” if Cravens committed somewhere other than USC. Looks like the people who make a living off of knowing the decisions of fickle teenagers are right once again.

Here are some tweets of what Cravens had to say about his decision to give his verbal to USC:

Check out this video from Rivals.com of Craven’s discussing his decision to become a Trojan.

At just 16 years old, Cravens is set to graduate early and plans to finish high school in December before early enrolling at USC in January 2013. In doing so, he will be able to give himself a leg up in terms of moving up the depth chart. Cravens has played both safety and running back in high school and put up some crazy stats in both. As a junior, Cravens rushed for 673 yards and 15 touchdowns, and also caught 20 passes for 339 yards and more four TDs. On defense, Cravens finished with 100 tackles, 11 sacks and three interceptions.

This bodes well for USC, who is in dire need of establishing a new running game once Curtis McNeal is gone. Cravens’s defensive game will also seamlessly mesh with the Trojan Secondary, and the trio of him, Gerald Bowman and Josh Shaw should be ready to step up and replace T.J. McDonald and Jawanza Starling when the time comes.

With the addition of Su’A Cravens, USC boasts one of the baddest recruiting classes from the Class of 2013 that was levels above the rest of the competition. His commitment to Trojans gives ‘SC the No. 5 overall player and three of the top eight players in the nation.It seems that even with a limited amount of scholarships, Lane Kiffin and his highly respected recruiting crew know exactly what to say to secure top talent.