Another diamond in the rough for Iowa

The Iowa football program has found their share of diamonds in the rough over the years and this weekend they may have located another gem in Stephane Ngoumou. The 6-foot-4, 205-pound wide receiver prospect from Maryland has gone under the radar as a recruit, but emerged with an outstanding senior season, picked up a scholarship offer from Iowa, and is now committed to the Hawkeyes.

"He called me this weekend and said, 'Coach, I'm a Hawkeye,' and he was very excited about it. He was really impressed by his visit to Iowa." said Greg Malling, who is Ngoumou's coach at Wootton High School.

Ngoumou's journey to even earning a scholarship at the college level is a one of a young man growing into maturity, according to Coach Malling.

"He is a great reminder that young people are able to reinvent themselves very quickly and completely," Malling said. "He came out and played as a freshman and was very undisciplined and wasn't real pleasant to work with. Then he didn't go out as a sophomore, but he came back out as a junior and he was buried on the depth chart and eventually dug himself out. Over the course of time, he became a great worker for us and a great player."

Malling is also quick to credit his high school basketball coach with helping Ngoumou to become more disciplined in his approach to sports and says that when he came back to the football team, he was a different person.

Those steps in maturity led to a standout senior season that included 71 catches for nearly 1,100 yards and 12 touchdowns.

"As a senior he really became more of a complete receiver, but he is also still very raw with only about two years of real football experience. I am really excited to see how far he can go and how good he can be at Iowa."

One would think that with numbers like that, college coaches would be making their way to Wootton High School, but that wasn't entirely the case. Malling said he approached a few schools, but they didn't seem that interested. Given Wootten's success on the field the last two decades, which hasn't been very good, most high major college programs haven't given them much of a look. But, thanks to an Iowa connection, the Hawkeyes became aware of Ngoumou and started to show strong interest.

"To be honest, Gunnard Twyner, who is from Iowa and coached in the area, was instrumental in Iowa finding out about him. He and I are good friends and he called Iowa and put a bug in their ear about Stephane," Malling said.

The final part of the recruiting puzzle was the official visit. According to Coach Malling, the Iowa coaches wanted to get him on campus and see for themselves how he reacted, if he would be a good fit with their program, and if the maturity issues were completely in the past.

"From what the Iowa coaches said, he made a really good impression," he said. "They said he represented himself, his school, and his family very well on the visit. I think that was the last piece of the puzzle that they were looking for from him on the visit. They knew his track record and wanted to make sure that he had changed and when they spent time around him, they could see that he had. He is a great young man now."

Malling said that schools like Syracuse, UCONN, Eastern Michigan, and several other schools in the Big East and MAC also showed interest. Ngoumou were scheduled to officially visit Syracuse this weekend, but that visit is now off and he is fully committed to Iowa.

He says he has never timed Ngumou in the forty yard dash for one very simple reason; no one seems to be able to catch him from behind. Malling just sings his praises for his work ethic in the weight room and imagines what his future will be like once he gets into a program like Iowa has to offer.

"When people see him in person, he is tall and athletic and that is obvious, but he is also pretty thick. When he lifts, he always lifts with the linemen and he has unbelievable potential. When you think about how much more mass he could put on in a program like Iowa with their reputation in strength and conditioning, he could be a giant."