What does this mean for the Wake Forest secondary?
Head coach Dave Clawson alerted the media last night that the Wake Forest defense will be without another player who contributed heavily to last year’s top 25 defense. Junior cornerback Dionte Austin will miss the season due to “personal reasons”.
Austin played in 12 games last season, missing only the Military Bowl victory over Temple. He contributed seven tackles on the year and was expected to compete for a starting cornerback spot this season.
Clawson said that the situation was similar to the one that Zeek Rodney had to deal with last year, and hoped that Austin will eventually return to Wake Forest.
From the Dan Collins article with the Winston-Salem Journal:
Clawson said the Deacons were especially glad to have added cornerback Cedric Jiles, a graduate transfer who played in 35 games — starting 11 — at Mississippi State. Jiles was running first team alongside sophomore Essang Bassey in Friday’s practice, but Clawson said that redshirt sophomore Amari Henderson is also competing to start in the Aug. 31 opener against Presbyterian.
According to that, early returns indicate that the grad transfer Jiles will hold down one of the cornerback spots, and the other spot is between Bassey and Henderson.
This is a loss to a guy who was in the two-deep and that is never good, especially four weeks before the season. It is unknown how long the staff has known about this, and could have played into the decision to go out and get Jiles a few months back.
