Colorado assistant head coach and receivers coach Darrin Chiaverini this morning was named to the Rivals' annual Top 25 Recruiters list.
Chiaverini earned a spot on the list for the 2019 recruiting cycle, and in 2020, seeing as he flipped two players to the Buffaloes, signed two of the three four-star recruits this year and overall, was responsible for signing nearly a third of CU's entire class, seeing him make the list for 2020 comes as little surprise.
Chiaverini's role in helping craft Colorado's Class of 2020 was far from lean. In fact, eight of Colorado's 25 signed players in the 2020 class were signed and primarily recruited by Chiaverini.
The Buffaloes' recent success in signing four-star RB Ashaad Clayton on Wednesday has been discussed at length, but Chiaverini brought the two other four-stars the Buffaloes landed last fall.
He managed to flip Texas DB Christian Gonzalez from a Purdue verbal commitment, flexing his presence in the Lone Star State in the process, while also playing a pivotal role in securing the services of Arizona WR Brenden Rice.
In addition to Rice and Gonzalez, Chiaverini signed Toren Pittman, Louis Passarello, Caleb Fauria, Chris Carpenter and Montana Lemonious-Craig to this year's class.
Finally, Chiaverini proved instrumental in flipping Keith Miller III from a Kansas verbal pledge; Miller in turn, once he joined the herd, went on to do some supplementary recruiting of his own, as he was a regular positive influencer to the likes of his high school (The Colony) teammate and friend Gonzalez, Rice as well as Clayton.
“It always comes down to relationships," Chiaverini recently told CUSportsNation. "The one thing that I try to focus on as a coach is just developing a relationship...It’s more than just football. It’s about building those relationships and the long term effect. That’s important. That’s why players sign (with me) at Colorado: because of the relationship I’ve built up with them over the course of a year, maybe two years."
While Chiaverini will be among the first to tell you that Colorado's recruiting is a team effort, since he joined the coaching staff at CU in 2016, the Buffaloes have experienced a trend in their yearly classes that is best and most simply described as noticeably upward.
Since 2018, Colorado' recruiting classes have every year gotten better in terms of their overall Rivals rank, with 2020 seeing an increase of 13 spots (32nd from 45th) in comparison to the 2019 class. From 2013-2015, the year before Chiaverini arrived in Boulder, CU never had a class ranked higher than 63rd in the nation.
Chiaverini has aided in remedying that via regularly signing four-star players in every season he's been on staff at CU save for 2018 (although that year's class did boast Daniel Arias).
Juwann Winfree in 2016, K.D. Nixon in 2017 (interestingly, Laviska Shenault was a three-star prospect out of high school, also in the Class of 2017), Vontae Shenault in 2019, and now Rice and Gonzalez in 2020; all four-star WRs Chiaverini has brought into the fold afor the Buffs.
As Chiaverini and Mel Tucker's coaches like to say, "we recruit every day." Thus, it's a safe bet that Chiaverini is already well at work to bring in elite talent to Boulder in 2021, 2022 and beyond.
