On National Signing Day 2016, new Virginia head coach Bronco Mendenhall acknowledged that there was work to be done when it came to class of 2017 recruiting.

“We’ve already started working really hard on 2017. We’re already behind in 2017, just simply because of our time frame here,” Mendenhall said. “We’re working diligently and we’re spending extra time as part of our workforce planning every single day. We’re allotting almost double the amount of time we traditionally take to make sure our recruiting gets caught up in 2017. By the time we hit summer we will be caught up for 2017 and we will be on track for ’18.”

With a month-long Dead Period in effect from mid-December through mid-January, the new Virginia staff essentially had only one month left to recruit the 2016 Class before Signing Day. An entire weekend in January was snowed out, which certainly didn’t help either. For all intents and purposes, the main goal in the final stretch was keeping the class together and adding a new piece or two, which is exactly what happened.

The 2017 Class presents Mendenhall and his staff the opportunity to show what they can do in a full recruiting cycle. So what can we expect from Virginia’s new regime recruiting-wise? For starters, a detailed-oriented approach.

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