FAYETTEVILLE — Nobody raided Arkansas this year.

Despite going 15 days without a head football coach before Bobby Petrino was hired Dec. 11 to replace Houston Nutt, Arkansas signed all 15 in-state high school players it offered scholarships.

That included 10 in-state players who committed before Nutt resigned and went to Ole Miss and five who joined on after Petrino’s hiring.

It was in sharp contrast to last year, when three of the top high school players in Arkansas went elsewhere.

“This is really a fascinating statistic,” Arkansas running backs coach and recruiting coordinator Tim Horton said. “Every kid in the state of Arkansas that Coach Petrino went to see, we got.” Petrino was hired three days before a dead recruiting period, and he and Horton used that time for a whirlwind tour of Arkansas and Memphis to shore up commitments.

“That was certainly a priority, the guys that were already committed here, particularly in state,” Petrino said. “We wanted at first to make sure we honored that commitment and hang on to it.

“ I was fortunate those first few days that Coach Horton was with me and understood the state and had a great relationship with the [high school ] coaches and had developed a relationship with most all the players. We just went out and battled and got involved with it early to get them on campus.” From a group of 20 fall commitments, the Razorbacks signed 13, including: Camden’s De’Anthony Curtis, Lavunce Askew and Jim Youngblood; Warren’s Greg Childs, Jarius Wright, Chris Gragg and Basmine Jones; Little Rock’s Cruz Williams; Fort Smith Northside’s Austin Eoff; Russellville’s Matt Hall; Khiry Battle of Dacula, Ga.; Jelani Smith of Abbeville, La.; and Tenarius Wright of Memphis.

Commitments the Razorbacks lost after Nutt left included Justin Smith, Josh Tatum and Devin Thomas to Ole Miss, Marcel Robinson to Southern Mississippi and Junior Okpara to Boston College.

Another commitment, Thomas Shuler III, isn’t academically eligible and is going to junior college.

Horton said Arkansas wouldn’t have been able to retain so many commitments had Petrino been hired later and not been able to visit recruits until January.

“We went [15 days ] where my response to [the recruits ] most of the time was, ‘Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, ’” Horton said. “Now, boom, we had some answers for them, and some good answers.

“ We had gotten to the end of the plank and we were about to have to jump in.... The timing worked out real well for us.” In a three-day span Petrino and Horton visited players in Camden, Warren, Russellville, Little Rock, Fort Smith and Memphis.

“We flew everywhere,” Horton said. “It was kind of like being on a crop duster, and we landed and jumped out and went to the next town.” Horton credited players such as Youngblood, Williams and Eoff for holding the commitments together during a time of uncertainly.

“They said, ‘ Hey, if we can stay together as a group, we can do something special and be a special class,’” Horton said.

Horton said after Petrino was hired, the decision was made to hit the in-state commitments in the three contact days available before the dead period.

“We may have lost a kid or two out of state because of that decision,” Horton said. “But I think it helped us get six or eight kids in the state that we might have lost.”