Jamie Rhodes – USA TODAY Sports

The Louisville Cardinals earned a commitment on Sunday from highly-ranked 2013 defensive end Stacy Thomas, adding the proverbial cherry on top of a class that ended up much better than people could have previously imagined.

The 6’2″, 225 Miami native also had offers on the table from the Kansas State Wildcats, Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles, LSU Tigers, Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Wisconsin Badgers among others — committing Charlie Strong’s team after plenty of deliberation which carried his decision well beyond National Signing Day which occurred earlier this month on February 6th.

Most recruiting sites like Rivals, 247 and Scout have Thomas as a three-star player, primarily because they were not able to see a full senior season from him given Thomas played only five games in his senior season. It appears an official visit to Louisville around a week ago was all that it took for Thomas to make the decision to take his talents to the state of Kentucky instead of staying in-state which many assumed he might.

After an official visit to Blacksburg to check out what the West Virginia Mountaineers had to offer in late January, many recruiting analysts assumed Thomas would be headed that direction, given it was the only official visit he had taken in his recruiting process, and Louisville appeared to be far back in the race.

If there’s a moral to the story, however, it’s that you can never sleep on Charlie Strong when he has his eyes on a player. The 2013 Louisville class was strong, and if getting late commits from guys like Stacy Thomas is any indication, Louisville fans should demand, and expect an even better class for 2014.

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Kris Hughes is the College Football Network Manager for Rant Sports. You can follow Kris on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook