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GOLD & BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4 43 is and where I can play on the biggest stage. I'm not afraid of competition, and I feel like the best man is going to win at the end of the day. It's not something that worries me because I feel like if I come and give it my best than it's going to work out for me." Young isn't the only one with that kind of confidence in his abilities. "I think there is some growth that still needs to take place," Caines said. "But as good as he is and as hard as he works and those things, I don't think there's any question he's going to be able to contribute right away. "He could be a future NFL guy with his length, his athletic ability, his work ethic." ANTHONY MAHOUNGOU When Cam Olson first saw An- thony Mahoungou, the potential was obvious. Even with limited experience playing football, a 17-year-old Mahoungou's athleti- cism and size stuck out. But Mahoungou was clearly raw, too. He'd only started playing football at 14 — it wasn't exactly the thing to do as a kid in France, where Mahoungou grew up. Olson knew that Mahoungou hadn't come close to reaching his potential, so while Olson was the head coach for the Paris Flash and Mahoungou was on the Flash Junior team, Olson sent Mahoungou to a football camp at Boise State. "I had a pretty good camp," Ma- houngou said. "So when I came back to France, I just realized, 'I don't want to just go to Canada like all my friends go. I want to play in D-I in America.' So I started to do much extra work." He not only worked with his own U19 team, which practiced three days a week, but he got permis- sion to join the over-20 team for its practices the other two days. Mahoungou studied film, too, in- creasing his knowledge of defens- es by watching college and NFL clips, as well as pouring over his own tape. After Olson left Paris in 2011, he kept in contact with Mahoungou. That's partly how Mahoungou land- ed at West Hills in Coalinga, Calif.: Olson was offensive coordinator. And it's where Olson watched Ma- houngou develop. "He has the type of intense drive that you see from kids that have a very clear vision of their goals," Olson said. "It was very common to see him doing developmental drills — footwork, hands, eyes, strength — before or after practices on his own or on days off as an addition to the scheduled structure that we had set for the team already. He is always looking for ways to im- prove." In his only season at West Hills, Mahoungou had a six-catch, 193- yard game and an eight-catch, 129- yard performance. He had seven games with at least one catch of 25 yards. He said he didn't face man coverage often in junior college, though he's been constantly re- minded by his Purdue teammates this winter that he'll need to beat press coverage at the X spot. That's one area West Hills coach Robert Tucker specifically mentioned Ma- houngou needs to improve. "I think the thing that he needs to do is just to have even a better understanding of his capabilities," Tucker said. "We try to coach guys to what they can be, rather than where they are, so we pushed him a ton, every day, in practice and he needs to get better at getting off of press, for instance. "… Those big guys like that, they can just make one inside or outside release and be able to leverage a guy because they're so big, and he doesn't understand that yet. To be able to do that, and he has really good hands, but to be able to flip his hands over and tru- ly be able to go up and dominate a corner is something that he's going to be able to do. Can he do it right now? Yes, at our level, but playing in the Big Ten, he's going to have to really work on that this spring." That may not be an issue. In only about a month on campus, Mahoungou quickly has gained a reputation for being a fierce work- er. Though he was in the devel- opmental group during Purdue's winter conditioning program — all the mid-year enrollees were — he was able to target increasing his jumping ability, a priority he said, as well as strength and speed. It's all working in an effort to win the competition that will start this spring but continue into the fall. "I see an opportunity," he said. "I don't fold under pressure. Be- cause my coaches expect a certain productivity, I don't want them to feel like, 'We shouldn't have re- cruited this guy.' I just want to prove to them that they made the right decision." j