Kelly looking at official visits
Rivals250 defensive end Xavier Kelly visited 15 schools in late spring/early summer before paring his list down to a top eight schools. Now he starts to look at what schools he will officially visit this fall.
Kelly does not have a pecking order among his top eight at this stage of the process. One school he is for sure will receive an official visit, though, is Oregon.
Advertisement
"I still haven't visited Oregon yet, but I feel that Oregon is a top football program," Kelly said. "They look nice on TV, so I want to see what they are like academically and off the field too. I'm not for sure which game I'll see yet, but I'll find out soon."
Of the remaining seven schools on his list, Kelly has two more that are likely to end up as official visit destinations.
"Probably Michigan and Alabama," Kelly said. "I really want to see the games, so it is probably going to be for games."
Clemson, Florida State, Georgia, Kansas State and TCU round out Kelly's top eight. Over 30 schools offered the Wichita (Kan.) East product, and narrowing that group down to a final eight was not an easy process.
"It was a hard decision," Kelly said. "I did a lot of research with my dad and every time we visited a school we took notes and looked at graduation rates, student/teacher ratio, my chances of playing as a freshman. We went through all those notes and felt this was the best eight for me."
One school that benefitted greatly from an unofficial visit last month was Clemson. Kelly said they were the school that improved their chances most via his on-campus experience.
"I was looking at them pretty strong, and when I went on the visit they got my attention even more," he said. "What really caught my attention was they never offered a JUCO player. No players had to worry about a JUCO player coming in and replacing them."
Kelly does not have any more visits planned for the remainder of the summer. The 6-foot-4, 257-pound prospect goes into his senior season ranked as the No. 150 player in the class of 2016.