MEGA BOOM! 5-Star DL Oluwole Betiku Commits To UCLA

Nov 8, 2014; Seattle, WA, USA; UCLA Bruins defensive lineman Owamagbe Odighizuwa (94) stands with his teammates before a game against the Washington Huskies at Husky Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

UCLA rocked the recruiting world on Thursday afternoon, as it landed the commitment of the #1 recruit in the state of California for the 2016 class: 5-star defensive end Oluwole Betiku (Gardena, CA/Serra).  The Bruins beat out the likes of USC, Penn State, Florida State, LSU, and countless others for the defensive line standout from Nigeria.

https://twitter.com/Kingwole47/status/629389545490898944

UCLA Bruins

As we wrote a month ago, Betiku is one of the most incredible high school athletes in the country. They just don’t make too many quite like this wunderkind who is built like a college junior already and still can extract more from himself physically as he becomes more involved in advanced weight training and proper nutrition.

Having only played football for only one year of his life to date, he is still incredibly raw, but by all accounts grows by leaps and bounds in terms of technique and understanding each time coaches and observers get the chance to watch him. Even in his first season playing the sport, he still racked up 11.5 sacks as a complete novice going up against some of the best teams in the CIF-Southern Section. There is no better marker of the amount of raw talent that Betiku possesses than that.

At Nike’s The Opening camp that took place about a month ago, Betiku squared off against the best high school offensive linemen in the country and blew the observers at the camp away with his strength, explosiveness, and physicality, as he rose to become a consensus 5-star recruit on the back of his performance in Beaverton.

Betiku’s commitment will cause aftershocks on multiple fronts. First and foremost, Betiku becomes the tentpole for UCLA’s 2016 class and a huge drawing card for the other elite recruits the Bruins are pursuing. Secondly, it continues to grow the Bruins’ burgeoning group of players of Nigerian descent, which has proved to be a valuable asset that the UCLA staff has drawn upon multiple times to bring in blue-chip offensive and defensive line talent over the last few years. Finally, and probably most importantly, UCLA has done what was thought to be impossible and won a recruiting battle over USC at Serra High School in Gardena.

For those who are unaware how important that last point is, Serra is an LA-area high school that is absolutely overflowing with talent. Although the Serra Cavaliers football program is coached by UCLA alum Scott Altenberg, it has, unfortunately for Bruin fans, been a total conveyor belt of talent to USC, as it has sent the Trojans the likes of Robert Woods, Marqise Lee, and Adoree’ Jackson, to name a few stars, in recent years. However, with Betiku now in tow, the Curse of Serra looks like it has finally been broken for UCLA, as the Bruins have landed a blue-chip Serra recruit who also holds a USC offer for the first time since 2002 (H/T Adam Gorney of Rivals).

Residual impact aside, Betiku is an elite physical specimen and prospect who will give Pac-12 offensive lines and quarterbacks nightmares once he arrives at UCLA. Bruins defensive line coach Angus McClure (and UCLA offensive lineman Caleb Benenoch) deserves a ton of credit for reeling in a player who is likely to be the foundation upon which the rest of the 2016 recruiting class is built and an absolute force on the UCLA defensive line for the foreseeable future.

Welcome to Westwood, Wole!

Next: UCLA Football: Can The Bruins Dominate In 2015?

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