Texas Football: Breaking down 4 must-get recruits in the 2024 class

The spring evaluation period is bringing the 2024 Texas football recruiting class into focus as head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff get the visit schedule configured ahead of the start of spring camp. Texas is looking for a big spring on the recruiting trail that can help to lay the foundation for a solid run for the 2024 cycle.

Sark and the Longhorns staff signed two straight top-five-ranked recruiting classes in the nation in the last two cycles. If this staff is able to sign three straight top-five-ranked recruiting classes in the nation by cobbling together another solid group for the 2024 cycle, that would be a tremendous way to transition the program talent-wise into the SEC next year.

But we’re still at the point in the offseason when the coaching staff is putting together the big board position-by-position in the 2024 class.

For the most part, the Longhorns have the top priority recruits in the 2024 class identified. It’s now just a matter of filling out the rest of the board and finding those important junior evaluations this spring.

5-Star WR Micah Hudson and the top priorities for Texas football in the 2024 class heading into the spring

With that in mind, here’s a look at an analysis of four priority recruits in the 2024 class that are “must-get” prospects for the Longhorns.

Kobe Black, CB

It’s really difficult to overstate the importance of Texas being able to keep the top-ranked cornerback in the state of Texas at home in the 2024 class. Cornerbacks coach Terry Joseph and the Longhorns are making the elite five-star Waco Connally cornerback Kobe Black one of the top priorities of any defensive recruit in the 2024 class for a reason.

The 6-foot and 190-pound Black could be a staple for the secondary in the Longhorns 2024 class if Texas is able to ultimately win the race to secure his commitment.

In each of the last two recruiting cycles, Texas had a go-to cover corner that it was able to sign. In the 2022 signing class, it was Texas flipping the highly touted four-star corner Terrance Brooks from the Ohio State Buckeyes. And the staple corner that Joseph and the Longhorns signed in the 2023 class was the uber-talented four-star South Oak Cliff product Malik Muhammad.

Black could wind up being that guy in the 2024 class. He’s a polished cornerback with good length, excellent timing and ball skills, and a high level of physicality.

Texas is currently sitting in a good spot for Black, especially after a successful Junior Day visit on the weekend of Jan. 21. Joseph and the Longhorns will need to keep him around campus a lot this year to be able to ultimately take the lead in this recruitment entering the fall.

This recruitment is likely to go on until the early fall, with official visits getting set around the late spring and early summer. Texas sits in a group of schools in a favorable spot in Black’s recruitment right now that also includes the Texas A&M Aggies, Oklahoma State Cowboys, LSU Tigers, and Alabama Crimson Tide, among a few others.

Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma State are the schools that Black has visited the most often, with each receiving at least four trips from the elite corner since 2021.

Getting Black back to campus not only sounds like something that is a logical next step for tExas in this recruitment, but also a move that the Waco native corner wants to do.