News-Record.com

Tommy Norwood has been a high school football coach for 28 years -- the last 26 in Guilford County, with the most recent 11 as the head man at Ragsdale High School. He's seen the waxing and waning of recruiting cycles, with different schools taking their turns mining the Triad for talent. But he hasn't seen too many Duke football coaches.

Until now.

"You've got to go back a lot of years to see them being this aggressive," said Norwood, whose star offensive lineman Joey Finison committed to Duke in late July.

Across the state of North Carolina other high school coaches are noticing the same thing about the Blue Devils. New coach David Cutcliffe has backed up his stated intention of recruiting in-state and the results are already starting to show.

When Finison committed in July, he was one of 15 players who picked Duke in an 11-day span. He also became the fifth North Carolinian to commit to the Blue Devils. Since then, four more in-state players have joined him, bringing the total to nine.

"We are very much tuned into what's going on in high school football in the state of North Carolina," Cutcliffe said.

How out of character is this for Duke? Consider that -- according to numbers on TheDevilsDen.com -- under the previous coaching staff, the Blue Devils brought in nine in-state players total in four full recruiting classes.

"You haven't seen a group at Duke that's working it this way in a long time," Norwood said.

How are the Blue Devils doing this? It's a combination of focus and planning, with a good bit of the Manning brothers mixed in.

Duke's recruiting focus under its previous head coach, Ted Roof, was clearly elsewhere.

"Because of his familiarity with the state of Georgia, they probably hit Georgia harder than they did the state of North Carolina," Norwood said.

The numbers back him up. According to The Devils Den, during Roof's four full recruiting classes the Blue Devils signed 19 Georgians, or more than twice the number of in-state players Duke brought in.

Conversely, Cutcliffe's familiarity with the state of North Carolina goes back into the early 80s, when he was recruiting the area as an assistant coach for Tennessee. The Volunteers have long raided their neighbors for talent, going back to Heath Shuler and Carl Pickens in the late 80s and early 90s to Jonathan Crompton and Montario Hardesty more recently.

The assistant who recruited Finison has even stronger local ties. Jim Collins, Duke's linebackers coach, is a 1974 Page High School graduate who is now on a Blue Devils' staff for a third time.

"He and coach Norwood have known each other for a long time," Finison said.

That kind of personal connection between his coach and recruiter clearly meant something to the 6-foot-4, 290-pound guard.

"If Coach Norwood tells me something, I'm probably going to do it," he said. "I have so much respect and trust in him."

But Norwood wasn't going to give Duke his OK just because of his friendship with Collins. Like other in-state high school coaches he has been impressed with what he has seen thus far from Cutcliffe and his staff.

"One of the big things is, that he's got a plan," said Norwood, noting Cutcliffe's prior experience as a head coach at Ole Miss. "He's been through it before. If you haven't been a head coach before, there are going to be some things happening that you're just not prepared for."

Another thing Cutcliffe has done before -- in case you've been living under a rock and might have missed it -- was coach both Peyton and Eli Manning when each was in college. He's been far from subtle in making sure that part of his coaching resume gets noticed by recruits.

Cutcliffe and the Manning brothers were sitting on the front row, underneath the basket during the most televised Duke sporting event, its annual home basketball game against UNC.

"Obviously, that speaks volumes, especially to quarterbacks and offensive players," said Zac Roper, Duke's recruiting coordinator. "Everybody wants an opportunity to play for this coaching staff."

Maybe not everybody, but certainly more in-state players are seizing that opportunity. It's a strong start for Cutcliffe and his staff, but perhaps more importantly, it's a reflection of the feeling that maybe, just maybe, Duke football is finally on the road to becoming competitive.

"I think, overall in the state, a lot of high school coaches believe that if Duke can ever turn it around, coach Cutcliffe and his staff will do it," Norwood said.

Contact Jim Young at 373-7016 or jim.young@news-record.com