Arizona football: Recruit hosting masters like Kwesi Mashack crucial for Wildcats

It takes a village to bring in a top recruit

When the Arizona Wildcats are looking to bring in some of the top recruits, it takes more than just the campus. Takes more than just the coaching staff.

It takes the current players as well.

When recruits are in Tucson visiting campus and taking in the sights of the University of Arizona, the coaching staff relies on some of the current players to give potential future Wildcats the best possible experience.

"We've got some great hosts," Rich Rodriguez said after practice on Wednesday. "Some of our players are undefeated in hosting. Every time they host they get the guy."

One of those guys that has earned a reputation of a great host is newly-made safety Kwesi Mashack.

"I heard he's the guy to go to!" Paul Magloire told me. "I've heard he's better than ME at recruiting when he has guys."

Mashack always gets guys from his hometown area of Inglewood, California.

"He always knows the guys before they come in," Magloire added. "He's always telling everybody 'Hey we got this guy coming in' and that's good for him and us, cuz we need those good guys."

"Anyone from my area, I get them when they come here, and we've got a lot of good dudes in my area," Mashack explained.

He has landed one guy that wasn't from his area though.

"The biggest surprise, only because he wasn't from my area, was Tristan Cooper," Mashack said. "I knew I could get him to commit, but since he wasn't from my area, I knew it was going to be a little harder. But I knew I could get him though."

Cooper is from El Paso.

When Director of On-campus Recruiting Matt Dudek and the rest of the coaches are setting up who's going to host who on these recruiting trips, there are plenty of players ready to offer up their services, but it comes down to the best ones.

"You hope that you get a lot of guys that want to host, and we do," coach Rodriguez stated. "So we have to turn guys away."

"It's a little of both," Mashack said of if he goes to the coaches or they come to him. "When I first started doing it, I came to Dudek I was like 'Let me host, I think I can get him to commit' and I ended up getting like six or seven guys to commit. So after that they were like 'Yeah you can host, you can host'. So now they just let me do my thing."

So what is Mashack's thing?

"I'm not gonna tell everybody my secret, because it's my secret, but I'm just really confident when I host guys we're recruiting," Mashack said.

"I'm just trying to let 'em feel that energy," Magloire explained of his strategy when he's hosting recruits. "No competition, but we definitely all want to get the good guys here."

"They enjoy it," Rodriguez said. "They get a free meal out of it, and I think they like talking about Arizona."

Kwesi certainly enjoys the free meal part.

"I'll take 'em to the movies and we'll go out to eat at Fleming's," said Mashack. "Fleming's is real good. And then we just chill and I'm really straight up with 'em."

"You always gotta go with the steak," Kwesi said about what he orders there. "The salmon's pretty good too but yeah, the steak's number one."

Maybe Mashack will be able to land a prime recruit along with some prime rib this weekend as Arizona welcomes a ton of visitors, including the top cornerback in the country.

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