Matt Campbell, Iowa State worked quickly to assemble first recruiting class

AMES — Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell had 65 days to sell a vision.

Hours after accepting the Cyclones job, Campbell started piecing together his ISU staff and an initial recruiting plan. Campbell had just more than two months to do what other schools had spent more than a year building.

On his 65th day as the Iowa State coach, Campbell stood at the podium in the Bergstrom Football Complex on National Signing Day and gave a small peak into what his staff achieved.

'What our staff did is really nothing short of incredible in this class,' Campbell said. 'This is our 65th day here at Iowa State and we've only had 23 countable days that we actually could be on the road recruiting. Of those 23 days we were on the road recruiting, we only had half of our staff here.

'To do what we were able to do and hit the numbers we were able to hit, to get the young men we were able to bring into our program, it's incredible.'

Iowa State ushered in 29 signees and six preferred walk-ons in Campbell's first class in Ames on Wednesday. The Cyclones checked in with a No. 44 ranking on Scout.com, moving up from No. 84 with 12 verbal commitments since Campbell took over.

In the 23 days, Campbell said the staff went to 28 states, had a 75 percent commitment rate from official visitors and secured players from 19 states. Five players in the class were four-star recruits coming out of high school.

Surprise commitments Campbell received were twins JaQuan and Joshua Bailey out of Jacksonville, Fla. JaQuan is a 6-foot-2, 245-pound defensive end and had offers from Virginia Tech, Tennessee, Florida and Louisville while Joshua is a 6-foot-2, 290-pound defensive lineman who was offered by South Florida, UCF and Cincinnati.

'JaQuan came in last Monday for the Kansas game, which was awesome to see that environment, and then Josh came last weekend, the last weekend for us,' Campbell said. 'Both of them had a ton of options, but I think ultimately the opportunity to play together — and they had opportunities at the places to play together as well, but I thought that was huge for us.'

In addition to mid-year high school quarterback signee Zeb Noland, Iowa State also signed junior college quarterback Jacob Park out of Northeast Oklahoma A&M. Park, 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds, sat out as a red-shirt at Georgia in 2014 before transferring to NEO, where he didn't compete in football.

After graduating Sam Richardson and losing Grant Rohach to graduate transfer, Iowa State was down to two scholarship quarterbacks for 2016 including Joel Lanning. Getting Noland and Park — who was late in the recruiting period — gives the Cyclones immediate depth for next season.

Iowa State also announced offensive lineman and grad transfer Tyler Catalina. Catalina committed to the Cyclones in December and signed a financial aid agreement, but since he is a grad transfer who did not ink a national letter of intent, he is able to be recruited and entertain offers until he would step foot on campus in May. Auburn, Florida and Texas A&M are a few schools pursuing Catalina alongside Iowa State.

'He chose us over some really big schools initially, Ill be honest with you,' Campbell said. 'Now there's some other big schools that are coming in, but that's our job. Our job is to continue to do a great job recruiting him. That's just the name of the game today and certainly in a situation like this.'

As impressed as Campbell was with the staff assembling a full recruiting class in two months, the assistants have already set their sights on what lies ahead.

'I told Matt last night, I feel like we're behind on 2017,' said tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator Alex Golesh. 'I don't mean to take it for granted because I think what we did was really, really neat but we did it all together which I think is cooler. As a staff, we did it together.'

l Comments: montzdylan@gmail.com