Continuing our roundtable discussion regarding Coach Mora's first recruiting class, today we're addressing filling "needs," the pending quarterback battle and predicting the impact of our class of linebackers. In case you missed it, in Part I of our recruiting roundtable discussion on Coach Mora's first recruiting class, we gave letter grades and discussed our favorite offensive and defensive recruits. We followed in Part II by discussing our "impact players" on both sides of the ball, predicting which freshmen might play immediately, and discussing our favorite "unheralded" recruit.

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While it was football that got all the attention last week, National Signing Day was not exclusive to just that sport. February 1st was the first day that high school seniors could commit to a school in several sports - cross country, soccer, track and field and men's water polo. High school seniors in these sports have until August 1st to send in a letter of intent.

There are a few effective differences from football signing day: as ESPN noted in their soccer signing day story, there is not the same rush for players to make a decision and to send in their LOI on signing day itself. Due partly to that fact - as well as the standing of these sports compared to football - there is no listing of commitments on the official site, not yet at least, and as a result the commits that follow were culled from outside sites - national sites such as ESPN's high school portal, sport specific sites and local sites and blogs covering prep sports - and may not be exhaustive for any or all sports.

Anyone who follows these UCLA sports or the local prep scene that has some thoughts or info on these recruits - or those that I might have missed - please chime in via the comments section.

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In Part I of our recruiting roundtable discussion on Coach Mora's first recruiting class, we gave letter grades and discussed our favorite offensive and defensive recruits. We'll now take a look at our choices for instant impact players on both sides of the ball, predict which members of the class will not redshirt, and discuss our favorite "unheralded" recruit.

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Nearly every pundit around deemed Coach Jim Mora's first recruiting class a huge coup. Not only did UCLA finish with a consensus top 20 class that reached as high as #11 in Scout.com's rating, Coach Mora effectively turned the momentum of the program and took a huge step towards reestablishing UCLA on the national scene. Of course, taking one step, however impressive, does not change the fact that UCLA is coming off a 6-8 season which included a beatdown on national television to a below average football team and a 0-50 surrender to USC, but it's a start. The countdown to next season has begun, and all Bruins should be excited to see Coach Mora follow up his recruiting efforts with a solid performance on the field.

Now that the dust has settled on the class, the frontpagers decided to hold a roundtable discussion to share our thoughts. The discussion will be broken into three parts, so be sure to check-in tomorrow and Wednesday to follow the discussion as well as share your thoughts.

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Jon Gold talking recruits with Coach Mora, via InsideUCLA's Youtube Channel.

After last night's Bruin basketball loss in Seattle, Bruins Nation could use a bit of a pick me up. Thankfully, Coach Jim Mora and his staff did well enough closing on the recruiting trail (as well as Coach Neuheisel's efforts earlier on) that my Signing Day wrap-up had to be divided into two parts. Yesterday, I looked at the recruits that are initially slated to play on the Offense. Today, my focus will be on the defensive players that are headed to Westwood.

With the new staff and the shift from a base 4-3 defense to a 3-4, there were more changes in the defensive recruiting targets than even the change in coaching staffs would have led to, as well changes in how the new guys will fit together with our existing personnel. With that said, the quantity of this class came at Defensive Back, where the roster certainly needed reinforcing.

Defensive Line

Eli Ankou - Bear, DE (Red Lion Christian Academy)

Rivals: 3 Star, #27 Strongside Defensive End, #1 Delaware recruit; Scout: 2 Star, #140 Defensive End.

Eli is a Canadian native who came to the States last Fall to play football, enrolling at Red Lion Academy, which over the past few years has begun building a football program which aims to emulate Oaks Christian's. Prior to that, he played club football in Canada, and by the end of the recruiting season had also received scholarship offers from Vanderbilt and UVa. A brief scouting report from the SIgning Day press release.

Moves well and has good quickness, strength, and pure speed

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After last year's football signing day, I wrote up a pair of wrap-up posts looking over the high school seniors that committed to the blue and gold. Those posts worked out pretty well last year, so you all are getting to experience them again. With the larger incoming class, you will see a few changes in organization from last year's series, particularly by more explicitly break down the players by position group (an easier task now that the Pistol is dead). You are about to start reading the first part covering the offense, with part two coming tomorrow with a look at the defensive commits as well as our newly recruited placekicker. Please don't hold back in using the comments below to discuss these new Bruins, though consider fanposting any extended thoughts that you might have.

After a slow start to the recruiting cycle, things kicked into gear in a big way after the hiring of Jim Mora as head coach and the swift recruitment and hiring of assistants such as Adrian Klemm, Demetrice Martin and Eric Yarber in early January. While some of the recruits that committed to Coach Neuheisel inevitably decommitted and found new homes as the recruiting season wound down, the new coaching staff was able to more than make up for the losses and quality of the incoming class at that point. By the time that all of the LOI's were in at Morgan Center last night, the UCLA recruiting class was rated as the 11th best class nationally (2nd in the Pac-12) by Scout.com, and 12th best nationally by Rivals.com.

Given the late coaching change in Westwood and the 6-8 season that led to it, the fact that the Bruins have exited signing day with a consensus top-15 recruiting class is nothing short of a miracle, and a testament to the work that the coaching staff has put in, the newbies as well as holdovers such as Angus McClure and even the support and grace shown by Rick Neuheisel after his dismissal.

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Well that was fun. Let's wrap up what has been an incredibly successful recruiting effort by Mora and his new staff at UCLA with some quick thoughts and data points.

When Mora took over the UCLA program our expectation was for him to finish out UCLA's recruiting class in this transition year with a strong effort, addressing critical needs at QBs, WRs, and DBs. Needless to say Mora has blown past all of our expectations with what turned out to be a great finish in the last few days and with a strong closing performance on signing day. As of right now, UCLA's class is ranked number 11 on Scout.com, no. 12 on Rivals.com and no. 19 on ESPN.com.

It is worth mentioning that Rick Neuheisel also had a good signing day in his first one as a UCLA coach. However, that effort was different than this one as Neuheisel held on to a class that was put together by Karl Dorrell's staff, spearheaded by Dewayne Walker as the Bruins were a year removed from 13-9. What makes Mora's success in last few weeks remarkable is that he essentially transformed the recruiting class Neuheisel left behind this past season by flipping recruits from other schools, who would have been interested in UCLA but became lukewarm due to our on field issues from last 2 seasons. Mora strategically built his staff by bringing in fierce, ace recruiters right away and also taking advantage of relationships built through his coaching network. Many of us had concerns about Mora's ability to recruit when his name came up. He has at least addressed that specific issue by knocking it out of the park.

Bruins have stocked up this class with solid prospects at DB, WR and with number of elite prospects highlighted by Ellis McCarthy and Devin Fuller. We will have lot more thoughts on the first recruiting class of Coach Jim Mora in the coming days. I will share some quick bullets from the official site after the jump.

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UCLA's red hot recruiting day just got even better with the announcement of 3/4* WR/CB Randall Goforth choosing UCLA over Arizona St. and Washington. He joins Jordan Payton who fired the first rocket for UCLA on signing day and Javon Williams who kept the momentum going as signing day commits who have joined our already stellar class.

Goforth checks in at 6'0, 175 lbs. The Poly product played primarily out of the slot in HS, which is where he would likely play if he ends up on the offensive side of the ball in college. It isn't clear at this point whether Goforth will play CB or WR, but both are positions of need. Some scouts have indicated that he is a better CB prospect, and it will be interesting to see how his situation plays out next season.

You can check out some of his highlights from 2010 here:

Randall Goforth #2 WR/KR Long Beach Poly 2010 Season Highlights (via LBPOLYfootball)

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