Upland’s Mathis narrows 52 offers to a top 10

Upland High School 4-star defensive end Joe Mathis is hoping to have less than 50 daily facebook messages to sift through after condensing his 52 scholarship offers into a top 10 today. Mathis’ list: USC, UCLA, Washington, Alabama, Michigan, Miami, Nebraska, Arizona State, Texas A&M and Tennessee.

“I can breathe a little bit now,” Mathis said. “I can be a kid again, hopefully. I was just ready for a lot of the schools to stop bothering me. Now I can really focus on these 10.”

The 6-foot-4, 254-pound Mathis, rated the No. 6 defensive end in the country by rivals.com, committed to Washington on Oct. 24 but less than three months later de-committed to officially open the flood gates. While he is inundated with messages from college coaches on a regular basis, Mathis also cited an increasing lack of communication with many schools as an easy reason to dismiss them from the list.

Mathis said he may reduce his list to a top five before announcing his destination on national television Jan. 5 at the U.S. Army All-American high school all-star game in San Antonio. A likely deciding factor for the school that will receive his commitment in seven months is honesty.

“You can just tell when you talk to a coach if they’re edited,” Mathis said. “And there are the ones that are just strait up with you. Some of these schools tell you you’re going to start and all this stuff that makes you doubt them.”

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