Marcus Griffin chooses Arizona over Cal, Washington State

Damn.

By Avinash Kunnath@avinashkunnath Feb 5, 2014, 7:52am PST

The California Golden Bears were hoping for some additional defensive line help on National Signing Day, but they're not going to get it from Marcus Griffin. The Bellevue (Wa.) defensive tackle ended up choosing Arizona from a list of four schools. Griffin had Arizona, Cal, Mississippi State, and Washington State in his final four.

Griffin was committed to Washington State for awhile, but reopened his recruitment back to November. Griffin did take a visit to Cal and the Bears seemed to be in the running for awhile, but seemed to fall behind in the final weeks and couldn't make up the ground in time. Griffin took visits to Arizona and Mississippi State and seemed to decide that despite Cal beating them in basketball this past weekend, Arizona was still a better choice.

Cal does get two junior college defensive tackles from this class in David Davis (from Long Beach City College) and Trevor Kelly (from College of San Mateo), so they should have some short-term fixes. But expect high school defensive tackles to be a high priority in the next class.