UCLA Football Recruiting: 5 Predictions For National Signing Day

We continue our coverage of the quickly up-and-coming National Signing Day for the UCLA football recruiting class of 2013. For our primer, go here, and for our best-case scenario, go here.

If you’ve read the aforementioned posts, you’d know that UCLA is currently in serious recruiting battles for the commitment of five highly-touted high school seniors: DT Eddie Vanderdoes, DE Kylie Fitts, RB Cornelius Elder, QB Asiantii Woulard, and LB Isaac Savaiinaea.

Those five names will be heard a lot in the upcoming days, especially among UCLA fans. They’re the last remaining recruits on UCLA’s radar for this class and all could very well be Bruins when the dust settles.

Here’s our predictions of the Fantastic Five:

Eddie Vanderdoes Will Commit To USC

This one could hurt UCLA quite a bit, considering it could have thrown a real wrench in the Trojans’ plans for the best recruiting class in the Pac-12.

Vanderdoes was a USC commit at one point before opening up his recruitment, despite some USC media members claiming him to be “rock-solid” to Southern Cal and that a de-commitment would be shocking.

Shocked they were, especially since the defection came very quickly after Vanderdoes visited UCLA head coach Jim Mora and company.

It has twice been rumored that Vanderdoes would re-commit to USC and the most recent rumor is that he’s more likely to end up at UCLA than USC, with the Trojans being effectively eliminated.

These, of course, are rumors, ones that should be ignored considering Vanderdoes has kept everything in-house.

Vanderdoes would be a massive pick-up for UCLA and could see starting time immediately if he did decide to head to Westwood.

For now, we predict Vanderdoes heads to USC, and if we had to break it down into numbers, we would say he’s 50.5 percent likely to head to South L.A. and 49.5 percent likely to live in the suburbs.

Kylie Fitts Will Commit To UCLA

The recruiting battle for the four-star defensive lineman’s services seems to be solely between USC and UCLA, with Fitts’ desire to stay in California being a huge reason.

This one’s easy, though, and it’s fair to say that he’s the closest recruit to being a “lock” to UCLA without being an actual lock. USC jobbed Fitts pretty hard, by forcing him out just a couple of days before he was set to enroll early at South Cal. Considering the bad taste that was left in his mouth as a result, it’d be difficult to see him wearing red and yellow when the dust settles.

Cornelius Elder Will Commit To UCLA

UCLA is a clear-cut favorite to head to Westwood, but Ohio State is definitely in the running as is another option: Basketball.

The four-star running back was also offered a scholarship to play hoops at Purdue, a traditionally-good program.

In the end, we predict he’ll want to play football, not basketball, and that he’ll commit to UCLA. The running back is high on the Buckeyes but it’s tough to imagine him turning down the Bruins considering he’s seen to have UCLA high on his radar.

Asiantii Woulard Will Commit To Clemson

UCLA made a nice, late push for Woulard to head west and as a result, Woulard’s choice has come down to one of Clemson, Kentucky, North Carolina State, South Florida and UCLA.

There are grumblings that Woulard is conflicted between Clemson and UCLA, where Clemson sees the potential for competing at quarterback immediately while UCLA could see Brett Hundley leaving early for the 2014 NFL draft.

This prediction, however, is tentative as hell, because UCLA also has a lot of advantages on the playing field. Head coach Jim Mora showed no hesitation in playing true freshmen, even when they were out of position. Look no further than Devin Fuller, a four-star QB that Mora recruited in 2012. While he stood behind Hundley, Richard Brehaut, Kevin Prince and Jerry Neuheisel in the depth chart, he asked for playing time at wide receiver and got it, becoming a productive wide-out for the Bruins last season.

Isaac Savaiinaea Will Commit To UCLA

UCLA is locked in a recruiting battle here with Texas A&M, a school that has earned itself a chance to obtain the spot of best recruiting class in the nation, with a whopping 32 commits on board.

However, there’s grumblings that four-star linebacker Savaiinaea is UCLA-leaning, and though Texas A&M is in the SEC — which seems to have a knock for producing NFL players — they aren’t the prototypical SEC team and the Aggies already have four middle linebackers in this recruiting class, a major hindrance to playing time as a true freshman.

We predict Savaiinaea, touted as one of the best prospects out of Hawai’i in years, to go to UCLA, albeit with low confidence.