Take Two: Can the Buckeyes flip top corner Elias Ricks?
Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling an issue 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 an expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites or a regional analyst.
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CLASS OF 2020 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State
CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals100 | Position | Team | State
THE STORYLINE
Elias Ricks is the top cornerback in the 2020 class and he’s been committed to LSU since Christmas Day, but a bunch of Ohio State commits are making it a point to try to get him to flip to the Buckeyes.
At The Opening in recent days, numerous players who have pledged to Ohio State were working on Ricks - who has still not announced where he will play his senior season - and the five-star cornerback who had six pick-sixes at Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei last season, is planning a trip to Columbus and other destinations as well.
Ricks has shown no serious interest in backing off his LSU pledge and he recently spent a good deal of time in Baton Rouge getting more comfortable with the place and working with the Tigers’ coaching staff. He has talked at length about his serious interest in LSU and especially how the program has churned out elite defensive backs over the years.
But the five-star cornerback said this spring and has reiterated his plans to take visits, with Clemson, Ohio State, Alabama, LSU and USC as his stops.
With the first signing day a little more than five months away, does Ricks stick with his LSU pledge and all this chatter is much ado about nothing or is there some real smoke with Ohio State?
FIRST TAKE: MARC GIVLER, BUCKEYEGROVE.COM
“Ohio State is supposed to get an official visit in the fall for the Penn State game in November. The interesting thing to watch is Ricks is very close with Lejond Cavazos and on July 18, he’s going to let everyone know where he’s going to play his senior season and that could be IMG. If he goes to IMG and has Cavazos in his ear every day for the next four or five months, I could see Ohio State making it interesting.
“I tend to think he’s going to stick with LSU unless there’s a major shakeup, but among the other contenders I would think Ohio State has the best chance of a flip.”
SECOND TAKE: MIKE FARRELL, RIVALS.COM
“I think he’ll stick with LSU. If he goes to IMG, Cavazos will work on him, but Ricks seems very tight with the LSU staff, they have a great defensive backs coach and he really seems to like Ed Orgeron and the vision they’re selling him.
“The momentum after an event like the Five-Star Challenge or The Opening, that fades pretty quickly. They definitely stay in touch on Twitter and stuff like that, but when someone is physically in your ear it’s a whole lot different and you sometimes say stuff to appease people. I think he’s all LSU.”
