The Hurry-Up is your nightly dose of updates from the Ohio State football recruiting trail, keeping tabs on the latest from commits and targets from around the country.
Davis says LSU commitment is solid
As we quickly hurtle toward the Dec. 16-18 early signing period, only three top-tier 2021 targets who might sign during that three-day stretch remain on Ohio State's radar to finish out the class in Emeka Egbuka, Tristan Leigh and Raesjon Davis.
With Leigh increasingly looking like he's trending away from the Buckeyes and with Oklahoma getting the final surge of momentum for Egbuka this weekend, let's turn our focus today to Davis.
Davis, the No. 45 overall player and No. 4 outside linebacker in America, is the key player we hit on last week as the top flip candidate for the Buckeyes in 2021. LSU has held his commitment since January 2020, but there have been some rumblings that either a decommitment or an outright flip to Ohio State is coming in the near future.
I spoke briefly with Davis over the weekend, and he says his plan is to still stick with the Tigers.
“They have been speculating, but I'm still locked in,” Davis told Eleven Warriors. “I haven't changed or decided to do anything yet so it's just a waiting game.”
Davis, however, is not 100 percent locked in to signing during the Dec. 16-18 window, he told 247Sports' Greg Biggins. As of now, Davis says, he is leaning toward signing early and locking himself into Ed Orgeron's program despite the fact that he will not be enrolling early and will instead play out his senior season at Mater Dei (California) High School in the spring.
“I would say it’s 70-30 that I’ll sign in December,” Davis said. “I’m still really solid with LSU, despite all the rumors out there. I hear them and know what people are saying but I still really like LSU a lot and feel like that’s a great place for me.
“I still need to talk with Coach O (Orgeron) and my parents about it but I know coach O really wants me to sign and get that locked in. I trust coach O and I love the fit for me at LSU so we’ll see what happens. In the next week or so, I’ll finalize that, signing early or waiting until February but this is where it’s at right now.”
When we spoke with Davis this summer, back when there was still a shred of optimism that the recruiting dead period would be lifted and visits might still happen (prior to the dead period being extended until April 2021, of course), he was fully intent on visiting Ohio State with his parents.
He has visited Columbus twice, though both visits were brief, and he wanted his family to see the campus for the first time and meet the coaches in person.
“My family hasn’t been out there yet so we haven’t had the real spark like LSU,” Davis said in June.
Al Washington and Ryan Day, though, are continuing to work hard in Davis' recruitment despite the fact that he hasn't been able to get a return visit in. The bond between Washington and Davis is at the forefront of his recruitment to Ohio State, so it would be a massive win for the second-year Buckeye linebackers coach to pull this one out of Baton Rouge (well, technically California).
“I have a lot of interest because of my relationship with Coach Washington,” Davis said. “But my parents are still feeling out everything.
“(Washington’s) a super cool dude. I enjoy talking to him, and even Coach (Corey) Dennis. He always says something funny. … He’s a funny dude. I talk to him, Coach Washington and Coach (Ryan) Day the most.”
Egbuka throws with Williams
Not be too much of an internet sleuth here, but Egbuka's visit to Oklahoma this weekend – judging by what you can see via social media – has included a ton of one-on-one time with Sooners five-star quarterback commit Caleb Williams.
That includes plenty of time spent on a field in or around Norman throwing passes and working on chemistry.
Egbuka has his choice of which five-star quarterback he wants to pair up with in the 2021 class between Williams, Ohio State's Kyle McCord and Washington's Sam Huard.
All the way back in June, Eleven Warriors had good information that Oklahoma had squeezed its way into the top tier of Egbuka's recruitment and that the Sooners were a team that should be taken seriously.
Though many had speculated that Oklahoma was just a fourth team that Egbuka had thrown into his final four, we were told that Lincoln Riley and receivers coach Dennis Simmons had made a major impression on him later in the process than Ohio State, Washington and Clemson and that the Sooners were an emerging threat.
Sooners receivers coach Dennis Simmons made a lot of visits out to Steilacoom before the pandemic shut down in-person recruiting, which helped add more impact to the multiple positive Zoom meetings with the staff as a whole and the recent virtual visit. Those coaches have gotten to know Egbuka as a person over the last several months, propelling themselves to get into that group of four. Oklahoma wasn’t doing anything the other three programs haven’t been doing all along; it just did it a little later than the other three.
That information was proven accurate, and Oklahoma has as a good of a chance as the other two programs to land him. When we checked in a couple months ago, I was told the race was running 1) Ohio State 2) Oklahoma 3) Washington with the final two a close 2-3.
With the Sooners getting perhaps the final visit from Egbuka (depending on whether or not Egbuka chooses to push forward with his plan to play his senior season in the spring and enroll at his college of choice in the summer), it might wind up giving them the lead.
Header photo: Raesjon Davis – Ken Ruinard/USA Today
