North Dakota Football Recruiting Adds Next Stars

EDITOR'S NOTE: This will be Big Sky Conference week for recruiting updates, wrapping up Friday with a ranking of the classes so far. 

North Dakota has a lot to be proud of right now–both on and off the field. 

The team is humming along on a six-game winning streak, playing some of the best football in the Big Sky Conference … and the coaching staff is putting together easily one of the top FCS recruiting classes in the nation. 

In the past few days, the Fighting Hawks reached double digits with their 2017 recruiting class, earning the commitments of a 3-star defensive end (Zeke Ott) who is also rated the No. 6 overall prospect in Minnesota by 247Sports.com's composite ranking. Also coming on board was defensive end Quintin Seguin out of Windsor, Ontario–one of the top prospects out of Canada. The two additions bring this already strong class up to 10 commitments. 

Ott is definitely on the radar of Big Ten schools, having taken unofficial visits to Minnesota and Iowa. Nationally, he is the eighth highest rated prospect currently committed to an FCS school, according to 247Sports.

"The coaches at UND are fired up, motivated and ready to win," Ott told HERO Sports. "Visiting there felt right. It's a great school and the coaches are a great fit for me and how I want to play football!.They have been proving that they are motivated and a great team by the way they have been playing this year, it's really exciting. That's the type of coaches they are, bouncing back (from last year's playoff snub), getting better, and they aren't going to leave it up to opinion this year. Leave no doubt."

Seguin loves the idea of playing D1 football in the United States. He hardly lacks a sense of humor, either. When asked if he'd be quoted for this article he responded: "That's fine, as long as UND is the highest rated team in your rankings."

It never hurts to have some personality, right? There's no problem in that department.

"They treated me as if I was one of their own players from the start, making me feel right at home," Seguin told HERO Sports. "Some of the things the coaches said they liked about me … that I have great character and I play nasty on the field, that I'm athletic and I move well."