Coach: Badgers add an "Ace" to their secondary
Devin Gaulden only had a short amount of time with new Wisconsin commit Semar Melvin during his stint on staff at St. Thomas Aquinas in Florida.
But the former UW cornerback made sure the coaches in Madison knew about the 6-foot, 165-pound four-star prospect. In turn, he also made sure Melvin was aware about the university he attended from 2011 to 2014.
"All I wore was Wisconsin gear around the corners at St. Thomas to make sure they were aware what was going on," Gaulden, who is now a coach at East Central University in Oklahoma, told BadgerBlitz.com. "On Fridays and Saturdays, I was head to toe in Wisconsin gear.
"So they all knew about Wisconsin."
Part of the recruiting process included communication with former Wisconsin graduate assistant Antonio Fenelus, who is now also on the staff at East Central as the defensive coordinator.
"I had some talks back and forth with Antonio Fenelus, who was the graduate assistant at Wisconsin at the time," Gaulden said. "I played with Antonio, so I reached out to him and made sure he knew about Ace."
Ace, of course, is what Melvin, who committed to Wisconsin Monday after an official visit this past weekend, is known as in the Fort Lauderdale area.
"He’s going to be great fit in Madison and you guys are going to love and embrace him," Gaulden, who played for the Badgers for four years before transferring to Wake Forest, said. "He’s a fun kid who always has a smile on his face. He loves to be around people and he loves to have fun. The head coach at St. Thomas makes the guys do stuff in the community and Ace was always right there ready to go.
"He comes from a great family with a great father and a great mother, so Wisconsin is getting a great person. I’m very happy this is going down because he’s going to represent what being a Badger is all about."
Melvin, commit No. 12 for UW in the 2019 class, is one of three corners in the group, along with Dean Engram and James Williams. He's a player, according to Gaulden, who is used to playing against some of the top talent in the country. And those are just the players at his own high school.
"Last football season and going back to last January, I was coaching the cornerbacks at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale," Gaulden said. "So that’s when I started coaching Ace, which is what everyone calls him down there. That’s when I started working with him and I remember that he was just all length and speed. He really didn’t have a set of skills or techniques that he could rely on just yet. So we tried to work with him from the ground up on his technique.
"He played in a secondary that was loaded at St. Thomas with Asante Samuel, Al Blades and Jaden Davis, who he was forced to compete against every day. So I think that also helped him a lot, too."
In the end, Melvin chose Wisconsin over offers from Boston College, Kentucky, Louisville, Mississippi State, UNC, NC State, Oklahoma, Syracuse and Virginia Tech, among others. He's entering a position group loaded with young talent, but Melvin possess the skills to compete right away.
"I think his top strength is his confidence," Gaulden said. "Ace is an extremely confident player and he believes in what he’s able to do. No one believes in Ace more than he does. But his speed is also great, and he’s one of the top track athletes in the state of Florida. He also has great length and he can get his hands on receivers in press coverage. All we did was play press coverage last year, so he’s very familiar with that. So the combination of confidence, speed and length made Ace a really heavily-recruited prospect.
"I think the weight room will be great for Semar, just like any other freshman. But I think Semar will be able to come in and compete right away because he's used to competition against high-level Division 1 guys every day. Our secondary last year could compete with most college secondaries because of the talent we had. So being around that, Semar has a chance to compete from Day 1."