Inside The Huskies

Georgia, Alabama Make Moves on Pair of Husky Commits

Vander Ploog and Zac Stascausky received SEC offers this week.

Dan Raley

Vander Ploog, UW tight-end commit, received offers from Alabama and Oregon this week.
Vander Ploog, UW tight-end commit, received offers from Alabama and Oregon this week. / Utah

In terms of college football recruiting, as classic New York Yankees catcher, manager and all-around wise sportting sage Yogi Berra used to utter so profoundly, it's never over until it's over.

Such is the case for a pair of University of Washington 2025 commits in tight end Vander Ploog and offensive tackle Zac Stascausky, who this past week found some of the nation's most revered programs in hot pursuit of their talents.

The 6-foot-6, 215-pound Ploog from Fullerton, California, received offers from Alabama and Oregon, while the 6-foot-6, 290-pound Stascausky from West Linn, Oregon, posted that Georgia had presented him with a scholarship proposal.

The Stascausky situation is particularly interesting because this program staple for Oregon's 6A championship team originally was lightly recruited by FBS schools as a 3-star prospect and was committed to Minnesota when the Huskies took a closer look, liked what they saw and flipped him this summer.

Could Stascausky change his mind once more?

Ploog likewise is finding his recruiting heating up rather than cooling down as a new football season begins.

The 4-star tight end from Troy High School in Southern California chose the UW after fielding a dozen offers through June, with Michigan State, Minnesota, Utah, California, SMU, Oregon and Arizona State among them, and became the Huskies' 15th commitment out of now 26.

With his size and skill set, he's always been considered a high-end recruit. In his junior season at Troy, he caught 61 passes for 1,047 yards and 12 touchdowns for a 7-5 team. As a sophomore, he hauled in 7 passes and 5 of them went for scores.

These days in college football, commitments are hardly that. Nothing is for certain until a recruit signs a binding national letter of intent, a process that some have proposed eliminating.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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