Bentonville West defender Kendall Young visited Arkansas on Saturday, and Tuesday, Razorback coaches were at his school.
Young, a 6-5, 220-pound pass rusher, has seen his stock rise recently. Missouri offered him last week, and he also has offers from Louisiana Tech, Army, Princeton, Rice and Southeast Missouri State.
Razorback defensive end coach Steve Caldwell attended the Wolverines’ practice Tuesday.
“He’s got a lot of the intangibles you can’t coach,” Bentonville West Coach Bryan Pratt said. “The 6-5 frame — he’s physical, and he chases the ball well. I think the thing that’s made him marketable here lately is he’s really worked hard in the weight room.”
His time in the weight room has been limited because of playing basketball, but Young skipped the hardwood for the weight room after the football season was over.
“This spring he decided he would just focus on the offseason, and he probably put on about 20 pounds,” Pratt said. “To me, that’s an area he’s really going to have to work. If he played down as a tight end, sometimes he wasn’t strong enough to be able to play technique. If he’s in space and you’re bringing him off the edge or he’s blitzing and he can just be an athlete, it’s awesome, but when he has to play technique he would get himself in a bad situation because he wasn't strong enough.”
Young recorded 85 tackles, 13 sacks, 4 tackles for loss, 5 pass deflections, an interception and a forced fumble as a junior. Pratt said schools are looking at Young as a defensive end and outside linebacker.
“A lot of people are looking at him because he has such a big frame — looking at him to play defensive end; some are looking at him as an outside linebacker,” Pratt said. “He’s a 4.8 (40-yard dash) kid so he’s not flashy out there at the Division I level in space with some of the cats he’s going to have to see, but he’s an extremely fast D-lineman. He’s about 220 right now, so a lot of places are looking at him at weighing 240, 250 or 260 by the time he graduates.”