Shocking news on Tuesday evening from Scout recruiting analyst Greg Powers about now-former 2013 Texas commit Ricky Seals-Jones, who only days ago ran a 4.4 40 at the Sunday Texas mini-camp and excelled at receiver as well:
Ricky Seals-Jones has de-committed from #Texas. #LSU, #TAMU, #Baylor mentioned now as schools he can hoop at as well as play football.
— Greg Powers (@GPowers79) June 6, 2012
If there is good news in this, it's that RSJ is still considering Texas:
#Texas is still a basketball/football option for Seals-Jones, per @GPowers79
— Kevin Flaherty (@LonghornDigest) June 6, 2012
Shocking may even be an understatement at this point. The news has now been confirmed by multiple other outlets, even though there were no rumblings that Seals-Jones was so intent on playing basketball in college.
Here's what RSJ had to say about his decision ($):
Texas is still high on the list. I just wanted to look around and make sure that Texas is the right place for me and not take anything for granted.
Texas needs to fix this right now and that clearly involves letting him know that he can play basketball at Texas if he so desires. As good as he is at basketball (and much improved recently, in his own words), he's a bit undersized for a wing and likely doesn't have a professional future there, so the key is simply to get him on campus and let him realize that the professional future for him lies in football.
Seals-Jones is an athletic freak and likely the top player in the Texas class -- which makes him too valuable to simply allow him to walk away because one or both of the football and basketball coaches staffs aren't willing to accommodate him.