West Spotlight: Five prospects that could flip
The 2019 and 2020 recruiting classes is littered with early commitments and that means there will be plenty of decommitments later in the recruiting process. Here are five prospects from the West that could end up signing with teams to which they aren't currently committed.
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USC has had tremendous recent success at Harbor City Narbonne getting Uchenna Nwosu in the 2014 class and then Raymond Scott in the 2018 group. Tauanu’u and his family love Oregon and coach Mario Cristobal has done a phenomenal job staying on top of the four-star’s recruitment but there are no signs that the Trojans are going to back down leading through the fall.
So far, the four-star offensive lineman has given no indication that he’s wavering on his Oregon pledge. But USC can be convincing to local prospects especially down the stretch toward signing day so it’s a recruitment to at least keep an eye on.
Floyd says all the right things about Texas. He absolutely loves the coaching staff, he has a great relationship with defensive coordinator Todd Orlando and he remains happily committed to the Longhorns.
But the four-star linebacker now playing at Westlake Village (Calif.) Westlake has bounced around to different high schools in the last few years and he has already been committed to USC. The Longhorns opened the season with a loss to Maryland for the second-straight season and now they have USC, TCU, Kansas State and Oklahoma coming up. Floyd has not hinted he’s looking around at all but teams won’t stop coming after the four-star linebacker.
It came as a surprise when Jones picked Utah in recent weeks not because the Utes are not a quality program and they were definitely coming after the four-star receiver but Jones had never indicated a readiness to commit at the time he did.
He and San Bernardino (Calif.) Cajon four-star quarterback Jayden Daniels have a special connection on the field and while Utah is definitely one of the front-runners for Daniels it will be interesting to see if he picks another school if Jones would then reconsider his options. Cal, UCLA and many others are in the mix for Daniels so following his recruitment could help figure out if Jones’ commitment to Utah sticks through the fall and into signing day.
For a while, USC was considered the front-runner for Paama but after an offseason visit to Washington, the massive lineman committed to the Huskies. The USC coaching staff has not given up on the 6-foot-4, 330-pound prospect and there is a good chance that Paama takes a round of visits this fall.
Again, no serious indication has been given that Paama is near backing off his pledge but the Trojans’ coaching staff is not just spinning their wheels - if they didn’t think they still had a shot then they’d probably move on to another prospect.
Both Washington and USC have done incredibly well recruiting the state of Hawaii so if Paama is looking to play with friends or acquaintances through football, either program would make sense.
Schools from the Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 have offered Casey but after working out with coach Jeff Tedford at summer camp, the 2020 quarterback decided to commit to Fresno State.
The Calabasas quarterback who put up big numbers in his sophomore season loves Tedford’s coaching style and the work he’s done with quarterbacks throughout his career so that’s going to be important moving forward. But if Casey continues to deliver on the field, more and more top programs are going to chase him in the coming years and Fresno State - while looking much better on the field recently - will have a lot of competition to land Casey’s services.