Tony Wallace to Arizona: Late blooming three-star corner signs with Wildcats

Arizona secures Tony Wallace despite Nebraska, Oregon, and USC offers

Rich Rodriguez and the rest of the Arizona Wildcats staff saw about half the class get picked apart down the stretch of this recruiting cycle. Three-star corner Tony Wallace was no exception.

Wallace spent all but one month of his recruiting process classified as a two-star recruit. This was largely due to his grades, dropping below a 2.0 GPA during his sophomore and junior year, which kept him away from football for two years.

Wallace transferred from Spring Valley High School (Las Vegas, NV) to powerhouse-in-the-making Desert Pines (Las Vegas, NV) during the spring of his junior year, which is when his recruitment really started, picking up offers from BYU, Colorado, and Nevada.

Arizona came into the picture this summer when Jahmile Addae and Jim Michalczik landed three-star linebacker Tony Fields and three-star offensive tackle Edgar Burrola, teammates of Wallace at Desert Pines.

Fast forward to December and the staff finally offered Wallace, committing just a few days later. Soon thereafter, he was offered by his dream school USC, followed by Oregon, and then Nebraska. It seemed likely that Wallace wasn’t going to make it to Arizona with his latest offers.

That jungle turned me to a monster http://pic.twitter.com/CAY924hAZE

— T.W (@Twaaall1) December 21, 2016

After a few weeks, he re-affirmed his commitment to Arizona via Twitter, but deleted the tweet just a few days later. This past weekend, he planned an official visit to Nebraska, but didn’t end up making the trip, sticking with Arizona.

Prior to 2017, Wallace was No. 238 among all corners in the nation and No. 2447 overall. Now he’s been upgraded to the No. 119 corner, just outside the top 1000 overall at No. 1075. It would have been interesting to see his ranking had he committed to Nebraska, Oregon, or USC.

Defensive stats are not available for Wallace at Desert Pines, but he helped lead the Jaguars to their first state championship in school history.

As for his future at Arizona, he’ll be competing for playing time at corner as a true freshman. It will be interesting to see how Marcel Yates rotates his new group in the secondary, with Dane Cruikshank and Jace Whittaker as the clear top two options. After that, there isn’t much depth at corner, which makes Wallace a solid play.

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