With myself going back to Dallas for Thanksgiving week and this whole head coaching search going on, I have not put out a recruiting update in a while. Luckily, there weren’t really any updates the week of November 19 and very few the week of November 26.

Before we get into the recruiting updates, I’ll just briefly talk about the impact that a change in head coach has on recruiting. I’ll go more in depth on Matt Wells recruiting later this week, but as far as the current commits, it appears a lot of them are sticking around as of now.

Although some of them are shocked and now on the fence (like Trevor Roberson, 87 rated 2019 OT), others are frustrated or seem motivated (Gilbert Ibeneme, 86 rated 2019 SDE) and others still stay they are 100% on board (Keith Miller III, 85 rated 2020 WR).

We’ve also seen a few decommitments within days of the hire. Maverick McIvor (84 rated 2019 QB) said with the new staff and uncertainty, he was reopening his recruitment. Same with Kee’yon Stewart (83 rated 2019 CB) and Alex Hogan (85 rated 2019 CB). Steven Parker (90 rated 2019 WDE) said he would still have Texas Tech on his list.

Like any coaching change, several things could happen where Tech could lose some more recruits. The Red Raiders got lucky in 2013 because Kliff Kingsbury cared about Tech so much that he was able to retain everybody who was on the fence, including Devin Lauderdale who decommitted before recommitting again.

However, some of these cases it’s not up to the recruit, even if they want to stay on board. Kingsbury kept the entire class together, but maybe the new coach doesn’t necessary want the commit. I’m not saying he’s going to take away his scholarship, but he could just not contact him or rarely do to make the commit want to go elsewhere.

Finally, with any coaching changes, there’s going to be transfers. Under Kingsbury, a lot of the freshman moved on (most notably Delvon Simmons), but unless the new coach is a top tier guy or cares about Tech as much as Kingsbury, we’ll see more guys transfer out. That’s one downside to making a coaching change, especially from a player’s coach.

So that being said, we saw a few commits to decommit, expect some transfers, and expect a huge 2020 recruiting class (unless the new coach and string together some commits in the last couple months of the recruiting cycle). Now to the updates.

Football 2020+:

• Malik Hornsby, 97 rated 2020 DT-QB, received an offer from the Red Raiders about a week ago. He has double digit offers so far.

Basketball 2019:

• Jahmius Ramsey, 97 rated SG commit, had some awesome dunks the last couple weeks. Here and here. He also went toe to toe with a five star and probably even outplayed him (in the first link).
• Russel Tchewa, 87 rated C commit, was finally ranked and 247sports gave him an 87, and Rivals gave him 3-stars. The class is currently 21st overall (5th in Big 12) according to 247sports and 19th overall (3rd in Big 12) according to Rivals without McCullar listed.