Luke Dalton picks up KU offer after camp workout
The Kansas coaching staff has already been to several different football camps around the country. Under the new rules they can travel to the camps as part of an invite to evaluate prospects.
On Wednesday members of the staff traveled to Illinois along with head coach Lance Leipold to watch players at the North Central Mega Camp.
Offensive line coach Scott Fuchs had a chance to work with the linemen and liked what he saw from Luke Dalton. Shortly after the Jayhawks offered him a scholarship.
“I've been talking to Coach Fuchs a little bit before,” Dalton said. “We were trying to connect to where he could see me, and it worked out tonight which was awesome. Then I got to meet Coach Leipold which is awesome as well. So, it was a great night.”
Dalton liked the opportunity to work with Fuchs throughout the camp.
“What was really cool is, in competition especially, in between reps, he would come up and say, ‘Hey, Luke. Try this just because I want to see this.’ I'd put it in my rep, and he'd be like "oh yeah, I loved that.’
“I want to adapt to what a coach wants to see. I like to be versatile in the aspect that if a coach says, I want you to set your angle deeper, I want you to put your hands in a different place… I'm all for it. I focus on if a coach tells you to do something, you've got to do it the next rep. I think he was happy to see that. It was just really cool to be coached by him and be in that environment.”
Leipold talked to Dalton and informed him the Jayhawks were extending a scholarship offer.
“He said they have been watching me for a while,” Dalton said. “Then he said they were offering me. He said they can’t wait to get me on campus. Then he told me ‘You're really, really high on our board.’ They are a really nice staff and I really enjoyed what they had to offer.”
The Jayhawks are the first Big 12 team to offer a scholarship. Dalton picked up an offer from Arizona State earlier and has several others.
He does not have an exact date yet when he plans to visit Kansas. With the offer just being extended he will look at options later in the summer and already has some trips scheduled.
“Kansas is a very cool area, so I'm really excited to go check out,” he said. “My family is excited about it as well. I'm just now trying to line up my schedule with other unofficial visits and everything. We discussed maybe towards the end of the month trying to line something up and go check out the campus.”
Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana will be three visits Dalton takes because they have been recruiting him for a while.
“University of Michigan, University of Iowa, and University of Indiana are schools that have been recruiting me hard,” Dalton said. “I have an unofficial scheduled for all of them. Iowa State's recruiting me pretty hard, and I have been talking with Syracuse. The Big 10 is definitely the hardest just given that I'm a Midwest kid.”
As the recruiting picks up for Dalton, he has a checklist of what he wants to find in a school. Football will be important, but academics will play a big part in his decision.
“I've always been a hard driven academics kid,” he said. “I really focus if the school lines up with what I want to study and does the school line up with the values that I focus on in the classroom? Does the program care about making sure guys get the class, making sure guys are focused on getting their stuff done, and doing what you have to do off the field to make sure you can stay on the field? That’s on the academic side.
“On the athletic side, as a family I want to make sure we're comfortable that this where we want to play, and this is where we're going to spend the next four to six years enjoying the relationship with the coaching staff. I'm all about the family concept, I'm all about feeling comfortable, and I'm all about making a unified decision.”