Inside The Huskies

Two Who Got Away from UW and Others Are Committed ... to SMU

Chinedu Onyeagoro and Mark Iheanachor will play for the new ACC member.

Dan Raley

Chinedu Onyeagoro chooses the UW over Florida, SMU and UCLA.
Chinedu Onyeagoro chooses the UW over Florida, SMU and UCLA. / Twitter

Two of the more unusual college football recruiting developments on Monday came out of Los Angeles, where a pair of 4-star prospects, edge rusher Chinedu Onyeagoro and linebacker Mark Iheanachor, passed on a number of powerhouse programs -- and each committed to SMU.

Onyeagoro, a 6-foot-4, 235-pound player from King Drew Magnet High School with a whopping 40 sacks over the past two seasons, went with the Mustangs instead of Florida, UCLA or Washington, passing up SEC and Big Ten opportunities.

The 6-foot-2, 215-pound Iheanachor from Narbonne High School chose SMU over Oklahoma, choosing not to go to the SEC, this after giving plenty of consideration to the Huskies and the Big Ten before pulling out of his official visit to Montlake in recent weeks.

In 1987, Dallas-based SMU drew the NCAA "death penalty" for providing improper payments from a slush fund to players and their families as it tried to elevate its program in a hurry. The football program was disbanded for an entire season and it's taken more than three decades for it to get on sound competitive footing again.

Now with name, image and likeness payouts deemed a legitimate part of the game, SMU appears to be thriving with its wealthy fan base and resources as it prepars to enter the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Just 16, Onyeagoro is a fascinating prospect who was a basketball player until changing sports two years ago. He's been a natural for football.

This past season, he finished with 128 tackles, 95 of which were solo, and had 30 tackles for loss, among them a California-best 21 sacks. He also forced 5 fumbles, intercepted 2 passes, deflected 3 passes and blocked 2 kicks over a dozen games.

Iheanachor is a two-way player for Narbonne High who has 160 tackles over two seasons, 93 this past fall, and 15 career tackles for loss. Also a running back, he rushed for 852 yards and a dozen touchdowns in 2023.

His older brother, Maxwell, is a 6-foot-6, 320-pound offensive lineman at Arizona State, who graduated from L.A.'s King Drew Magnet High, which is Onyeagoro's current school.

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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