More On Terence Kerns

There's a piece up on the Daily Mail about Kerns, chronicling his challenges to become eligible to play for West Virginia.

The score from his latest ACT was available online July 11 and Kerns was ready to discover the result at the earliest opportunity possible. If the grade was high enough, he'd be able to play for the Mountaineers two years after committing. If it was too low, he was off to junior college for at least a year-and-a-half.

Kerns needed only to click the mouse a few times to learn the truth about the test he took July 1 at Thomas Johnson High, in Frederick, Md.

"I couldn't do it," he said. "I went to bed instead. I was too scared to look at it. I knew my whole life would be messed up if I didn't get it. I pretty much chickened out and waited until the morning."

His nerves finally gave way to sleep at around 5 a.m. A few hours later, he discovered he scored a 22 on the ACT, which when combined with his 2.5 GPA at prep school is good enough to qualify.

Before I go on, it's also important to point out that Finau is not out of the picture yet, as was previously reported.

The status of another significant recruit, junior college defensive end Tevita Finau, is still uncertain. He's not out of the picture and still has a few weeks to complete his coursework and graduate on time.

Back to Kerns. The pressure was incredible from people wanting to be the first to know when or if he would become eligible. So he did what any of us would do. He lied to get people off his back.

The pressure had an affect and Kerns found it difficult to escape the speculation. He'd go out and people would ask when he was leaving. He'd check his Facebook page online and discover dozens of messages wondering the same. He had no idea how to deal with it all.

"I pretty much lied to them just to get them off my back," he said. "They'd say, 'Terence, when are you leaving?' I'd be like, 'Two weeks.' Then they'd go and tell people I'd qualified. Two weeks would come and I'd have to come up with another answer."

Now I know I went on a tiny rant last week about how we shouldn't fawn over coaches or recruits. I still think that is true. You're only setting them and yourself up for disappointment. But when a guy is 6'1"-235 and runs a sub 4.4 you just have to channel the voice of Houston Nutt a little....

GiggityGiggityGiggityGiggity