Initial 2024 Rivals250 includes UVa targets

It is Rivals Rankings Week on the mothership, with the initial Rivals250 for the 2024 recruiting class dropping on Tuesday. Position and state rankings will be released as the rollout continues later this week.

About two dozen of those 250 five- and four-star players have offers from Virginia. Most of those offers were extended by the previous coaching staff, which largely went its separate ways after former head coach Bronco Mendenhall stepped down in December.

New UVa coach Tony Elliott and his staff have been energized on the recruiting trail in their first few months together, scrambling to add seven players to the Cavaliers’ 2022 class on the February signing day. Combined with the nine who signed just days after Elliott was hired in December, that class ranked No. 63 nationally and 10th in the ACC.

That 2022 UVa class didn’t include any four-star prospects; the program hasn’t signed a five-star recruit since the duo of Andrew Brown and Quin Blanding in 2014. With the release of the initial Rivals250 for 2024, a glance at where the Wahoos fit with some of the top junior prospects in the country:

There are six five-star prospects in the initial 2024 Rivals250. One has an offer from Virginia: Cornerback Desmond Ricks, the No. 2 overall player in the class. Here is Ricks catching up with Rivals national recruiting analyst Adam Gorney:

A Chesapeake native who transferred to IMG Academy in Florida prior to his sophomore season, the 6-foot-2, 180-pound Ricks is up to more than 30 offers. As you’d expect from a player of his caliber, Ricks’ list of offers includes national powers like Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Ricks was already at IMG Academy when the previous UVa staff offered in October 2020. He has visited the school twice, as recently as last December.

The No. 8 overall player in the 2024 class—No. 2 among four-star recruits—is Johns Creek (Ga.) defensive end Alex “T.A.” Cunningham. The 6-foot-6, 268-pound Cunningham boasts more than 50 offers, including one from the Wahoos. He was offered by the previous staff last October.

Since his arrival at UVa, Elliott has consistently made it a point to mention the importance of strengthening the program’s recruiting presence among Virginia schools.

Beyond Virginia native Ricks, the initial 2024 Rivals250 includes five players from in-state high schools. All five have been offered by UVa, beginning with 6-foot-7, 210-pound defensive end Elijah Washington from Lake Taylor. The No. 79 overall player in the class, Washington was offered by UVa last December, in the midst of the coaching change. It’s the only offer the four-star prospect has announced.

Kristopher Jones, the No. 109 prospect in the initial rankings, has more than a half dozen offers. The four-star outside linebacker picked up his UVa offer in mid-October, and was in attendance for the Wahoos’ win over Georgia Tech a few days later. The Mountain View product was back in Charlottesville for a Junior Day visit with the new staff in late January.

The previous staff was in early on Virginia Beach wide receiver Keylen Adams, extending an offer in November of his freshman season at Green Run. Adams is the No. 175 player in the initial 2024 Rivals250. Cornerback Assad “BJ” Brown is at No. 222. He picked up a Virginia offer last January, shortly after his freshman season.

The final in-state prospect in the first Rivals250 for 2024 is King George receiver Chanz Wiggins, the No. 242 overall player in the class. UVa was the first school to offer Wiggins last September. He attended the new coaching staff’s first Junior Day in mid-January.

The current UVa roster includes four scholarship quarterbacks: senior Brennan Armstrong, rising true sophomore Jay Woolfolk, and first-years Davis Lane and Delaney Crawford, who both signed in December.

Two of the four-star QBs among the Rivals250 have UVa offers: Little Rock (Ar.) Christian pro-style quarterback Walker White (No. 147) and Windsor (Ct.) Loomis Chaffee pro-style QB Dante Reno.

The 6-foot-3, 210-pound White was offered by the previous staff during a visit for the Duke game last October. The 6-foot-1, 216-pound Reno was offered by new quarterbacks coach Taylor Lamb in late January. Reno is up to more than a dozen offers.

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