Arizona lands Peters to continue roll with legacy recruits

Saturday brought a close lose for Arizona as the Wildcats fell to Houston 19-16, but in that game Rich Rodriguez's leading receiver was a tight end and with an important tight end recruit in the stands it paid off. Less than 24 hours after the game Arizona landed its latest commitment with three-star prospect Jake Peters deciding he would follow in his parents' footsteps and attend school in Tucson.

"I really liked how they used the tight end last night in Arizona's offense," Peters said. "I just told my dad, 'I'm ready to pull the trigger' and he goes, 'if you're ready then I'm ready.' So we ended up after the game I know everyone was kind of a little upset about the loss and everything, so I went into coach (Calvin) Magee's office and told him that I wanted to be a Wildcat.

"The entire mood of all the coaches completely shifted and it was really cool to see how excited they were."

Peters visited Arizona over the weekend and the latest trip out to Tucson was enough to get the job done. Peters' father played for the Wildcats in the 80s, so the program already held a special place in his recruitment and things went into overdrive when he visited Tucson earlier in the year.

He eventually picked up an offer from the program last month but it was that visit out to Tucson that stuck with him.

"I didn't really realize how serious they were about me until I came down for my visit," Peters said back in the summer. "The first thing I walked into coach Magee, who has been working with the tight ends, I sat down in his office and he said,'you're a great player and if you wouldn't have gotten hurt we would have offered you two years ago.'

"So for the first time ever meeting the guy that was a really big impression on me, and it just shows how much they believe in me as a player where a lot of coaches have been stringing me along for a while."

One reason schools were stringing Peters along is because of an injury that knocked him out of action for his junior season. The 6-foot-5 tight end injured his Achilles as a junior and it forced him to miss the entire 2016 season. Now healthy schools had been slower to come around and after picking up an offer from Washington prior to his injury schools had been slow to make a move.

That is when Arizona pounced and it ended with his commitment Sunday evening. Peters is back and healthy and has a couple catches so far this season as his Rancho Santa Margarita (Calif.) Santa Margarita team is off to a 3-0 start.

Hawaii, Montana State and Northern Arizona all ended up jumping in for the big tight end but he decided to go with the family connection and pick Arizona over those schools and UW, which left its offer on the table despite his injury.

Peters is now the 11th commitment for Arizona in the 2018 class and the fifth from California.