Elite 5-star OT Kelvin Banks increasingly interested in Texas football

There are currently a lot of encouraging signs for the 2022 Texas football recruiting class as they sit firmly in the midst of the race to win over the interests of the elite five-star Summer Creek 6-foot-5 and 300 pound offensive tackle Kelvin Banks. The former Oklahoma State Cowboys commit and Texas native Banks is getting a lot of buzz around the entire college football recruiting landscape at the moment.

It was just back on March 10 of this year that Banks announced his eight finalist schools, which did include the Longhorns amid a number of other Big 12 programs. The other seven schools that Banks included among his eight finalists were the Arkansas Razorbacks, LSU Tigers, Oklahoma Sooners, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss Rebels, Oregon Ducks, and Texas A&M Aggies.

Moreover, it was last July that Banks re-opened his recruitment by decommitting from Oklahoma State’s 2022 class. He now has a couple of key official visits set once those resume in the summer. He has official visits scheduled now with Oklahoma State and Texas A&M in mid-June.

With Banks now having two official visits lined up, and his latest round of finalist school cuts announced, his recruitment is really heating up. As of the afternoon of March 14, Banks held offers from two dozen schools. He’s not cut two-thirds of those schools that had previously sent him a scholarship offer.

The competition for Texas football

Some of the more notable schools that Banks cut in his latest finalist announcement included the Alabama Crimson Tide, Auburn Tigers, Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles, TCU Horned Frogs, Tennessee Volunteers, and USC Trojans.

Texas will need to continue to put the pressure on Banks, in a good way, to convince him that the Forty Acres is the right spot for him. They’re going to have to battle hard with usual recruiting rival schools like the Oklahoma schools, Texas A&M, LSU, etc.

There’s not a clear indication at the moment where Banks is leaning to for which school will get his commitment. Oklahoma State could very well still win him over, but so could head coach Jimbo Fisher and the Aggies.

Moreover, Banks ranks as the nation’s No. 31 2022 high school prospect, No. 2 offensive tackle, and the No. 6 prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). And the Top247 ranks him as the nation’s No. 24 high school prospect, No. 2 offensive tackle, and the No. 7 prospect out of Texas.

According to the 247Sports Team Composite Rankings, the 2022 Texas recruiting class now ranks at No. 8 in the nation and in the second spot in the Big 12 behind Oklahoma. They now hold commits from six prospects in the 2022 class after the recent decommitment from the elite four-star Frisco-Liberty wide receiver Evan Stewart.