Official Visit Catch-Up
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Normally this is where there would be a week 3 look ahead at the official visitors coming to Montlake for the weekend, but since there no official visitors this weekend (there will be on Monday, but we will get to that) lets take a look back at how the visits went over the first two weeks.
The Huskies saw eight visitors the first weekend, but it with far more committed prospects to the class than uncommitted it may have lacked the ‘wow factor’ that fans may look forward to. That said, the early returns have been great to say the least with 2/3 of them committing to the Huskies.
WR Dontay Tyson was considered a Husky lean before coming on his OV, but that didn’t stop the excitement of landing their 4th 4-star WR commit of the class. His other finalist, Texas A&M, was supposed to receive the final visit before his planned announcement but the Huskies knocked his visit out of the park. He cancelled his trip to A&M and announced shortly after for the Huskies.
While it was one thing to land a prospect already leaning towards you, landing a 4-star from across the country at an important position like edge is even more impressive. Edge Chaz Gray become the most recent commitment in the class after cancelling his planned trips to Clemson and Tennessee. While our recruiting writer Aaron was one to quickly and accurately predict Gray had committed, a lot of Husky nation was taken by surprise when he announced his commitment. Tough not to be excited when you land a prospect that had offers from schools like Georgia, Miami, and Ohio State among many others. As if that wasn’t good enough news already, Gray has a younger brother named Tahj who is also a very talented recruit and make the trip with him. The Huskies have already offered Tahj, but then again when you are a 5-star prospect like he is almost everyone has offered him.
The only prospect that visited the first week that is not committed to UW is CB Kamil Loud. Before diving in, congrats to the young man for picking up his 4th star during the recent re-ranking by 247Sports. Loud has changed his visit schedule since I posted about him prior to his trip to Montlake and swapped in Cal for Utah and Florida St. for Arizona. Cal is the major threat here since he is from the Bay Area and grew up a Cal fan. If he leaves Berkley without committing and makes his trip to Florida St. I think that would be beneficial for UW. They will still have their work cut out for them to beat out Cal, but the more time they have to recruit him after his Cal official the better. I originally put a 35% chance the Huskies land him and that still feels about right considering Cal received a recent CB to land him.
When it comes to the summer official visit period, getting the first visit has proven to be a winning strategy for a lot of schools. Plenty of prospects besides Tyson and Gray shut down their visits due to early commitments across the country. It is a difficult balancing act for recruiting staffs around the country because if you think you can close a prospect early, of course get them in early. If staffs believe they will continue to take their visits they will want to have the last possible visit before they decide.
While there were still more committed official visitors and uncommitted during the second official visit weekend, the amount uncommitted was twice as many as week one. This was a strong group of uncommitted prospects that included three of the top ten prospects in our UWDP Recruiting Big Board 2.0
Teammates CB Evan Mack and QB Caden Jones made the trip up together from Crean Lutheran (Irvine, CA) and both had an excellent time. The intel before the trip was that Arizona was the favorite for the pair of them. This is certainly no surprise for Jones, whose brother is already on the Wildcats roster, but Arizona has surged with Mack after initially favoring UW early in the process.
With local talented CB Maurice Williams already committed and the strong DB class that was signed last year, the Huskies are being very selective which CB prospects they continue to heavily recruit. Mack is only one of three uncommitted CB prospects the staff is bringing in for official visits, which shows they are indeed very interested in him. Prior to his visit I had projected a 5% chance at landing him and I will double it to 10%. Still not confident, but more open to the possibility.
Obviously the question with Jones is, do the Huskies really take a second HS QB commit? They don’t appear to be trying to actively recruit other QB prospects, so it is Jones or bust if they want to make that happen. Jones has known this plan for a while now and was blown away during his trip. I don’t think it will be enough to overtake Arizona, but they certainly opened his eyes to what it could look like if he were to choose UW. I had a 0% chance of landing him, but after such a great visit I will match his teammates possibility at 10%.
It sounds like the visit checked a lot of boxes for Edge Josh Christensen. There were a couple of DL commits on the visit with him and he spent a lot of time with players on the roster from Oregon, including his player host and former HS teammate TE Sam Vyhlidal. It has been a shared feeling among people in recruiting circles that if Oregon pushes for his commitment, it is tough to see him turning that down. He is still scheduled to visit Eugene this weekend, but the Ducks recently added their fourth commit who could play at the edge spot. Will they still have room for him and will they continue to push hard? You can make the argument that they have filled all the spots, but the Ducks have broken their mold this class and have been willing to take lower ranked players from in-state and already have three commitments from local players. While I am certainly not going to discount Oklahoma, my gut is telling me Christensen will stay in the PNW. I am increasing my probability from 40% to 50%.
S Jaden Walk-Green entered the weekend with the highest probability of committing to the Huskies and I still stand by that. UCLA gave him a lot to think about the week prior and Arizona St., who he is visiting this weekend, has been recruiting him longer than just about anyone. With all that said, experts still have their predictions in for Walk-Green to end up a Husky and although I could go even higher than my original 70% confidence, I will keep it there for now. He is set to announce his commitment June 20.
As I mentioned earlier, this weekend had multiple visitors from our Big Board. That is especially true for CB Censere Gaylord, the top player on our list. Gaylord is originally from California and UW is the only school west of the Mississippi that he has among his list of favorites and Coach Richardson has been recruiting him since he was in 8th grade. Georgia Tech, Georgia, and Auburn are all major competition for him and even after a great trip to Montlake I still believe the Bulldogs are the team to beat. He is taking a visit to Athens this weekend, so keep an eye out for that. I had him at a 33% confidence level and even though I think Georgia will be tough to overcome I am still raising it to 40%.
Saving the biggest news for last and their highest ranked visitor this past weekend was WR Osani Gayles. It was recently reported that following his trip to UW, he has cancelled his remaining two visits to Tennessee and Notre Dame. This is significant because ND was perceived to be the leader for him and now they won’t even receive an OV. He will be deciding between the schools he has taken officials to; Stanford, Alabama, and UW. Stanford has the hometown connection being less than two hours away from his hometown and his father played for the Cardinal as well. While those will certainly be factors, it appears to be a battle between Alabama and Washington. Although UW has four WR commits already, none of them are true slot players like Gayles is. The Crimoson Tide is always a daunting opponent to recruit against, but as I mentioned earlier in the article getting the first or the last visit matters the most. A couple of CBs have come in for Gayles to Alabama, but it is likely not a coincidence that he cancelled his other trips after visiting UW. I am giving a major confidence bump up from 5% to 50%. He is set to announce between the three schools June 27.
Midweek visits are historically not he most fruitful when it comes to picking up commitments, but when a prospect’s weekend calendar is already full you do what you must to get them on campus. That is what the coaches had to do with Edge Jag Ioane and DL Sam LeJeune.
Ioane was supposed to visit the first weekend, but ended up pushing it due to schedule conflicts. I felt the same back then as I do now that the visit appears to have not been worth UW’s time. Ioane has a pretty firm top three of BYU, Michigan, and Utah and it doesn’t appear the Huskies were able to move the needle enough to change that. I give the edge to the Cougars right now.
LeJeune on the other hand wanted to be on Montlake, but in hindsight for him the timing was poor. Official visits are a maximum of 48 hours, but he was only there for about 24 and that was right after he was coming off an OV weekend at Cal. The timing wouldn’t be as unfortunate if he had not ended up cancelling his visit next weekend to LSU and could have given a full weekend to the Huskies then. It was already going to be an uphill battle to land a top 150 player from Mississippi, but not taking full advantage of an OV hurts. I probably won’t move him up from a 20% confidence level with Florida St. now getting his final visit and them being the likely favorite going in. He also had a great visit to Cal and they are likely above UW in his pecking order right now as well.
Although I could have done a week 3 article just for one player, I decided to do this recap instead since local OL prospect Rashaun Lavata’i will begin his OV to UW 6/15. He is visiting Utah this weekend though and since he is a midweek visitor I will be talking about him here. Lavata’i has been blowing up on the camp circuit this summer and dominating the competition. The Huskies were a little late scheduling his visit, but they are still getting him on campus and my gut tells me if they push hard for him (and I think they will), they will get him. I’ll put my confidence at 40% with the Utes being the biggest competition.
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