NORFOLK, VA– When Brian Cavicante left the Hampton Roads area (also known as “The 757”) he was a lightly regarded high school fullback. When he returned on July 26 for MEAC Media Day, he was recognized as the conference’s preseason Defensive Player of The Year.
“After we played NSU, a coach had come up to me and said, ‘man I’m sorry we let you slide though here,” Cavicante told HBCU Gameday.
NSU wasn’t the only school that missed out on Cavicante. He said he had zero Division I offers coming out of Portsmouth’s Norcom High School in 2014 so instead he elected to go to Milford Academy Prep.
“When I graduated high school I went to prep school for a semester and I played linebacker there, and I guess I caught DSU’s eye,” he said. “I had no Divsion I offers coming out of high school.”
Cavicante put up 80 tackles, 10 sacks and picked off three passes in his year at Milford. That performance was good enought to land him an offer to head up to Delaware. He could have given up on his dream of playing D1 football, but he was determined.
“I had a couple D3, D2s, but I didn’t want to go D2 so I just rolled the dice on prep school and I played good up there to get the offer from DSU and the rest is history,” he said.
He’s spent the last three years showing that he belongs in the MEAC for sure, putting up back-to-back 70-plus tackle seasons in 2016 and 2017 before really coming into his own in 2018. He was second in the league in total tackles (89) and third in tackles-per- game (8.1) as a junior last season. In addition, he was second in the conference with 17 tackles-for-loss and tied for third with 50 unassisted tackles.
While he’s happy for his personal success, he’s more focused on getting DSU back to relevance in the MEAC.
“I try to stay focused on the team goals, I don’t try to get involved in myself. As long as I take care of the team stuff, all the individual stuff will come along,” he said. “I feel like when you focus on the individual stuff, it kind of holds you back from being as good as you can be.”
No mistake about it, though. If DSU has more success than it has in the past decade, Cavicante will have played a huge role in it.
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