Texas Football: Breaking down 5 most important visitors for Rice game
There is a growing visitor list for Texas football for the regular season opener this weekend at home at DKR against the Rice Owls. Texas is hosting multiple blue-chip recruits in the 2024 and 2025 classes for visits for the Rice game on Sep. 2 (kickoff time at 2:30 p.m. CT).
Head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns have a good mix of Texas commits, targets, and rising prospects in future classes visiting this weekend. Texas is set to have multiple commitments from the 2024 class visiting for the opener this weekend.
Some of the Texas commits in the 2024 class visiting this weekend are four-star North Richland Hills (Richland) interior offensive lineman Daniel Cruz, three-star Cypress (TX) Cy-Fair quarterback Trey Owens, and potentially four-star Scottsdale (AZ) Desert Mountain cornerback Santana Wilson (per Horns247).
Depending on the particular visitor list from the major recruiting outlets, Texas has anywhere between a couple dozen to over 40 recruits making it to campus for the opener on Sep. 2. But we’re only looking at the confirmed visitors for this list for Week 1.
Biggest Week 1 visiting recruits for Texas football vs. Rice
Here are five of the most important visitors for the Longhorns this weekend for the Rice game.
Zina Umeozulu, EDGE (2024)
Four-star Allen edge rusher Zina Umeozulu is one of Texas’ top EDGE priorities in the 2024 class heading into the fall. He is making his first visit to Texas this weekend for the Rice game since he made an official trip to Austin in late June.
Visiting Texas for a game at DKR is nothing new to Umeozulu, though. He’s visited Texas nearly a half-dozen times for games in the last two seasons. And he’ll probably be at Texas plenty of times this fall to see the Longhorns and his brother, second-year OL Neto Umeozulu, play.
Texas is the leader in this recruitment heading into the fall. But the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas A&M Aggies are pushing to close the gap on Texas late this summer.
It will be interesting to see how much Zina’s brother, Neto, sees the field this season. If Neto gets more live-game reps this season and has a good experience on campus this fall, Zina will likely end up at Texas heading into signing day in mid-December.