Take Two: Which team will land five-star Anthony Cook?

Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

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Monday is when five-star cornerback Anthony Cook is expected to make his decision with Texas, Ohio State and LSU as his three finalists.

The second-ranked cornerback in the 2018 class behind only Plantation (Fla.) American Heritage’s Patrick Surtain, Cook narrowed his list to those three schools in the last few months and seemingly all three have a real shot to still land him.

The whispers have the Longhorns and Buckeyes slightly ahead of LSU but the Tigers cannot be counted out since the five-star cornerback apparently loved his trip to Baton Rouge a few weeks ago.

The Houston (Texas) Lamar standout had really positive things to say about first-year coach Tom Herman this summer at the Rivals100 Five-Star Challenge presented by adidas and the main thing he wants to see out of the Longhorns this season is marked improvement. Has he seen enough to stay home?

Unlike previous years under then-coach Charlie Strong, Texas has been recruiting phenomenally well with commitments from five of the top seven in-state players. Cook would be the cherry on top since he’s Texas’ top prospect.

Ohio State has been considered the front-runner for some time and it helps that coach Urban Meyer and his staff have pumped out so many top defensive backs to the NFL in recent years.

Only days away from his decision, will Cook pick the Longhorns, Buckeyes or Tigers? It still seems up for debate.

“At this point, I’m not completely sure anyone knows what Cook is going to do. It seems like opinions vary depending on who you talk to, and there’s no real consensus. Most of the focus has been on Texas and Ohio State, but don’t sleep on LSU, which supposedly made a strong impression on his visit a couple weeks ago.

“The guess here is that Cook decides to stay close to home and Texas wins out, but I can’t say I have a ton of confidence in that pick. If the Longhorns do land him, it will be another huge pick-up in terms of UT’s momentum and another huge building block in an already impressive defensive back class.”

“LSU has a better shot than many think but most have felt this would come down to Ohio State and Texas I'll go with Texas here. There are connections he has there and he seems to have warmed up to the approach the staff has taken with him as they carved into Ohio State's lead.

“There is a lot of local pressure to go to Texas and they’ve increased their chances in the last couple months. Ohio State has been the leader for so long and LSU has made a charge so this is a tough one to call but I'll go with Texas."