“Yes sir — it was good,” he said of his time in Columbus. “I enjoyed my time definitely. I met most of the coaches, and I had a good energy.”
That Ohio State was an early stop on what could be a busy recruiting tour for Brown this month was no coincidence.
The junior-to-be wanted to make an early impression on OSU receivers coach Brian Hartline and others before they started taking a closer look at other prospects.
Of course, the campus being only an hour or so away also helped.
“He’s a good coach, for sure,” Brown said of Hartline. “His energy is up there. He interacts with his players a lot. I can tell like from the relationships he has with (current Buckeyes) Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson and all the other receivers, they all had a good relationship with him. That just showed me he puts effort into his players.”
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
Brown, who is busy this weekend with the Wildcats track team running the 4x1 and 4x2 relays, plans to head to Penn State on Sunday and to see Michigan next Sunday.
He also has a trip planned to Purdue, but the date for that has not been nailed down.
The Boilermakers have had success with a player such as Brown before.
At 5-foot-10, 170 pounds, he plays a variety of positions for Springfield but projects as a slot in college.
While he could follow in the footsteps of a player like Rondale Moore at Purdue or K.J. Hamler at Penn State, he could have a unique skillset among the players currently on the Ohio State roster if he ended up wearing scarlet and gray.
All that is still to be determined, though.
After catching 40 passes for 829 yards and nine touchdowns last season, Brown has a dozen scholarship offers from schools in the Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, SEC and more.
Minnesota, where his brother Mike Brown-Stephens is a sophomore receiver, is among those to offer along with Wisconsin, West Virginia, Pitt, Iowa State, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, Miami (Ohio), Cincinnati, Toledo, Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky.
After recruiting was relegated mostly to video conferencing for the past year, Brown is happy to be able to see and be seen on college campuses, but he is not in a hurry to make a commitment.
That could come after his junior season, one in which he and the Wildcats hope to make that last step to the state championship.
“We’re focused,” Brown said of a squad that has lost in the state semifinals the last two seasons. “We’ve gone as far as you can go the last two years but came up short. This year, it’s a must. We’ve gotta win.”
Of recruiting, he said, “I’m just really taking it all in. I can’t really get a big head. Going over Zoom, it was a little harder for the coaches, but since they passed the mandate we can go to camps, it’s just really me getting to showcase my talent in front of the coaches. I feel like that’s a big thing, so we’ll see how this summer goes.”
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