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Tinilau visits UM Monday: "I loved the way they ran the practice"

OL Frankie Tinilau had four scholarship offers March 1, including the Miami Hurricanes.

Now, just six days later?

He’s up to nine, with the newest including the likes of Hawaii, Maryland and BYU.

Not bad for a guy who hasn’t played a single down of football in America. Tinilau is from Australia and is working to get his visa to enroll at Miami (Fla.) Immaculata-La Salle High School in the fall.

He was on campus this morning to watch UM’s practice, but couldn’t stay longer because he is working to get his high school credits transferred over.

“I just wanted to go over this morning and watch them practice,” Tinilau said. “I want to make sure that if I am going to make some decisions it would be the right decisions for me.”

Tinilau says he likely won’t make any commitment in the next few months, but he came away impressed by Miami.

“I loved the way they ran the practice and everyone gets work, just the way the coaching staff is,” he said. “They don’t coach from the sidelines, they get very involved.

“This was my first American practice - it was well organized, honestly. The coaching staff being able to take the 85 kids out there practicing, having everything go smoothly and they did really well.”

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Tinilau says when he first walked through the doors at the football facility “all the coaches came up to me excited. They said it’s great to see you again (he added a Miami offer March 1 when he visited campus).”

Tinilau also wanted to see the Canes before heading back home - he flies to Los Angeles tomorrow and will visit USC before flying home to Australia on Friday.

“Right now Miami is up on my board,” Tinilau said. “There’s a bunch of others up there, too, that just haven’t offered yet. I’ll be back in the states in June for a bunch of camps.”

Tinilau says he hopes to visit Miami again when he returns to the U.S. in June and that “I’ll take an official visit to Miami in the season.”

CaneSport’s take

With Tinilau planning to attend high school in Miami, that’s a big built-in advantage for the Canes. With Tinilau planning to wait, though, look for him to land a lot more offers especially with his plans to take a lot of camp trips in June. So this will be a battle.

OTHER MONDAY VISITORS

In addition to our updates today on the visits of Tinilau and Antonio Tripp, other visitors for practice included QB Mack Howard and DL David Hicks.

Plus David Ojiegbe told us he will be arriving on campus this evening and spending a few hours with coaches.

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