THE OTHER GAME

HARRISONBURG — There is one reason Mike Houston cut a few hours a day from his vacation to take work calls.

The culprit of disruption — recruiting.

James Madison and its third-year coach are in the process of putting together an ace class. All of the Dukes’ seven verbal commitments hold scholarship offers from at least two FBS schools. Four of the seven pledges have an offer from a Power Five program.

“The challenge now is when you’re recruiting guys that are so highly sought after, you’ve got to hold on to them,” Houston said earlier this week at Colonial Athletic Association media day in Baltimore. “A lot of those guys have Power Five offers and a lot of them have people that are really pressuring them right now to try to flip them. So with recruiting, even though we’re in good shape right now, it’s never ending.

“I was on the phone last night and I’ll probably be on the phone this evening. It’s a deal that when I was on vacation, I had to carve out a couple of hours each day to take care of this.”

Houston can’t comment on specific athletes in the group until they’re signed, but the class features two Rivals.com three-star prospects and four two-star prospects.

Northwest (Germantown, Md.) cornerback AJ Woods, who gave his verbal to James Madison last month after earning offers from Virginia and Temple, announced over Twitter on Friday that he flipped his committment to Pittsburgh.

Hermitage (Richmond) running back CJ Jackson has a Big Ten offer from Purdue. After he committed, Jackson said JMU beat out the Boilermakers, East Carolina and Old Dominion. Jackson holds 16 total offers.

Good Counsel (Olney, Md.) linebacker Julio Ayamel, who announced his commitment to JMU on Twitter last week, has an SEC offer from Kentucky. So does West Orange (N.J.) safety Jordan White. Good Counsel defensive end Jalen Green, the 15th-best prospect in Maryland by Rivals, has an offer from Virginia.

“The big thing with the Power Five schools is just that we’re an FCS program,” Houston said. “They hammer us with it.”

The big brother doesn’t like the little brother taking what’s not theirs, so Houston and his staff are doing everything they can until the NCAA’s early signing period in December to keep the class intact.

Houston said as long as coaching staff urges the commitments to recall why they selected JMU in the first place, he thinks those athletes will stick.

“And the thing that I always stress to the kids is that, ‘Well, if that’s the case then why don’t they play us,’” Houston said, “because these schools that are hammering us, they won’t play us or schedule us, and we’ve asked them, but they still want to demean us.

“So we just try to focus on what we are, that we’re a program that’ll do things right, treat kids right, have fun playing and win a lot of ballgames doing it.”

Houston said he’s adjusted to the early signing period, which was introduced last year. JMU inked 13 members of its 16-man 2018 class early. For the class of 2019, Gaffney (S.C.) tight end Hunter Bullock already has said he plans to enroll early.

Shelby (N.C.) defensive back Dorian Davis was the first to commit in the class when he pledged in April.

“With the early signing period, it’s sped up everybody,” Houston said. “It’s sped us up. It’s sped the players up.

“All the kids that are committed to us have been on campus multiple times throughout the spring and summer, so they’ve gotten to know us very well and we’ve gotten to know them very well.

“I think our success coupled with the job that [recruiting coordinator] Fontel Mines and our staff are doing with the recruiting efforts — the combination of those things has allowed us to recruit at what I think is as talented as a class that’s committed right now as you could hope for.”

JMU will graduate just 12 players off its current roster at the end of the season, so Houston said the recruiting class, “is almost done.”