On Friday, one of the top players in the state of North Carolina will announce his commitment, shutting down what has been a recruitment of twists and turns over the past couple of months.
2024 4✮ ATH Jonathan Paylor will reveal his decision later this evening at 6:00 PM at Cummings High School in Burlington, NC via live stream. The Tar Heels are one of the five finalists that he set back in late June following the conclusions of his official visits, joined by Maryland, NC State, Penn State and South Carolina.
While he is officially down to five, this has felt like a three horse race over the past couple of weeks. South Carolina entered the month of June as the heavy favorite for him after a tremendous spring in this recruitment, but have been pushed hard since then by the Tar Heels and Wolfpack. He visited both of those schools last weekend, choosing not to head to Columbia one last time before the decision.
The Tar Heels have done a great job just to keep themselves in the race and the team’s recent commits have been pushing hard to help their standing. Unfortunately, it looks like NC State has made an even harder charge than the Tar Heels have. The Wolfpack clearly prioritized him as their biggest target in this 2024 class and that looks to have paid off for them.
The experts strongly favor the Wolfpack going into the announcement this evening. Fourteen different predictions have been cast across the three major sites and all of them are high-confidence predictions in favor of Dave Doeren and his staff. Big names like 247Sports Director of Recruiting Steve Wiltfong, 247Sports National Recruiting Analyst Brian Dohn and Rivals National Recruiting Analyst Adam Friedman all favor the Wolfpack in their predictions that were cast in the last couple of days. The On3 Sports Recruiting Prediction Machine also strongly favors NC State, giving them a 93.8% chance to land his commitment today.
Prediction: NC State