Hutchinson Community College product Malik Benson picked up an offer from Oklahoma yesterday and he’s quickly one of the top 2023 targets.
Hutchinson Community College wide receiver Malik Benson picked up an Oklahoma offer yesterday. The offer from the Sooners is the latest in a flurry of national recruiting interest for the talented class of 2023 JUCO prospect.
Benson is a 6-foot-1, 185 pound wide receiver that registered 43 receptions for 1,229 yards and 11 touchdowns last season with the Blue Dragons. The Lansing, Kan., product suddenly has 22 Division I offers and an offer from FCS program South Dakota according to 247Sports. In the past month alone, Benson has secured offers from programs such as Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Miami, Oregon, Penn State and Tennessee.
Ryan Wallace, a Kansas State insider and recruiting editor for GoPowercat.com of the 247Sports network, covered Benson’s recruitment in high school. Wallace said the location of Lansing High School and its schedule may have worked against Benson in terms of exposure during his initial recruitment.
“What I can tell you about Malik is he’s a kid that I think had he been maybe a little bit closer to the Kansas City metro or really anywhere that had a little bit more of a spotlight on it at a bigger classification, I think he’s a kid that would’ve probably had not garnered the type of attention that he’s getting necessarily at Hutchinson, but certainly would’ve been maybe on more schools in the region’s radar. He played at Lansing High School. Again, Lansing is kind of part of the Kansas City metro, but the league that they’re in, they don’t play a lot of schools that are kind of closer to the city. Again, they’re just kind of on the outskirts as a 5A team and they flirted with 4A, too. Had he played at a Lee’s Summit North or something in Kansas City or even a school like Piper or something on the Kansas side maybe he would’ve seen more exposure that way, too,” Wallace said.
In high school, Benson played with class of 2022 University of Iowa defensive line signee Caden Crawford at Lansing. Crawford was the No. 2 player out of the state of Kansas in the 2022 class according to the 247Sports composite. Naturally, there was plenty of attention surrounding Crawford’s recruitment.
When folks would come to watch Crawford at Lansing, Benson was one of the other players that stood out for the Lions. Unfortunately, Lansing’s offense wasn’t really designed to showcase all of Benson’s abilities.
“Caden was a guy that everybody knew. And so, if you went out to see Caden, you would kind of see sparks and flashes from this wide receiver, this 6-foot-1 wide receiver, but Malik played in an offense where they didn’t throw the ball a ton. In fact, Caden Crawford who again is going to play defensive end at Iowa was kind of a 50-50 quarterback for that team, so that can kind of give you an idea of the type of offense that they ran. They would throw a couple bombs to Malik, but most of the time it was just going to be ground and pound type of offense. He was kind of overshadowed at times I think by Caden and the fact that he played in that offense. He just didn’t get a chance to really show everything that he could do,” Wallace said.
One thing kept popping up about Benson for those really dialed in or for those that asked, though.
“He was one of those guys that the more you talked to coaches, the more you talked to a guy like Caden that played alongside of him, everybody would always tell you about Malik Benson. And so, you start to dig into the numbers and immediately you would find that this a freak athlete. Not just in Kansas, I mean, this is a freak national athlete. 6-foot-1, 190, runs a sub-11 100-meter dash, nearly has a long jump of close to 25 feet. I mean, he was putting up ridiculous track numbers as a sophomore. And then, his junior year there was the COVID year and so they didn’t really have a state track meet, which I think also might have impacted his recruitment. I think if he had done for instance what we saw Jaren Kanak do on the track where immediately then everybody saw his 100-meter dash that went viral and started blowing him up, maybe Malik could’ve taken off with that 2020 track time,” Wallace said.
To those that have followed Benson’s recruitment from the start, it’s no surprise that he’s now receiving the type of attention on the recruiting trail nationally that he’s enjoyed of late.
“Talking to some of the coaches at Hutchinson, Drew Dallas the head coach and Kody Cook his wide receivers coach, they both told me, ‘Listen, Malik’s track times, his quote combine numbers were always going to attract national attention. SEC coaches were always going to come in here and when they would see the numbers that we would put out in front of them on Malik, there was going to be SEC attention on him.’ The difference was he then finally had tape to put along with those combine numbers because of the offense that Hutchinson runs. When you have the statistical season that he put out last year with the raw athleticism that he’s able to show these coaches when they come out and watch him go through a workout or go through testing, it was just a matter of time before the Oklahoma’s and Alabama’s of the world figured it out,” Wallace said.
As far as the Sooners’ chances to land Benson, Wallace said Oklahoma should have a reasonable shot.
“It’ll be interesting. I think he would definitely be intrigued by Oklahoma just because of the prestige and the fact that they’re relatively close to home,” Wallace said.
Here’s a look at Benson’s Hudl tape.
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