the five-star junior athlete from oakland high school in murfreesboro, tenn., said he had a great time at tennessee on saturday, and the vols are definitely back on my radar and helped themselves a lot by making a good impression on him during their first junior day of the year.
tennessee is a team that is going to be taken seriously for the next year i guess you could say months now, said stevens, who's ranked the nations no. 15 overall prospect and the no. 1 player from tennessee in the 247sports composite for the 2017 class.
theyre back on my radar, and theyre just a team that i like. This visit really helped them, just like the georgia visit helped georgia last week.
the 6-foot-1.5, 200-pound stevens who decommitted from lsu in november said hes definitely going to visit ut again, perhaps to attend one of its upcoming spring practices, if he can fit it into his schedule.
its definitely a school im going to be coming back to and visit often like these other schools, im going to visit often, he said. ut kind of put themselves in that mix where im going to come back and study and see how the coaches coach their players, how the players respond to the coaches stuff like that.
he said he enjoyed talking extensively saturday with new tennessee defensive coordinator bob shoop who also recruited stevens during his previous stints at vanderbilt and penn state along with vols head coach butch jones and defensive backs coach willie martinez.
Stevens said was particularly pleased to receive clarification from tennessees coaches on how they plan to use him in their defense.
(photo: Ryan callahan, 247sports)
it was great seeing shoop was back in town and talking to coach shoop and coach jones, stevens said. i talked to coach martinez. It was great, just showing me where i would be playing if i do come to tennessee.
coach shoop, he was at penn state, and he had a player, (adrian) amos, he said he wants me kind of in that position where i can play the safety, i can play nickel and play dime, and come off the edge rushing just stuff like that. Thats the position he said he envisions me playing for ut.
this time i got more clarification. The past times i was here, of course i went to the game and the coaches were busy. But with ut, i wasnt clear at first on what they wanted me at. But now i took it upon myself to ask questions and take the process more serious, and i got my questions answered, and now im more clear on where they want me.
stevens, who hadnt been to tennessee since attending its home game against alabama in october 2014, said he talked more extensively with jones than he had during any of his previous visits with the vols.
i dont want to say that coach jones hasnt been talking with me, because he has. Hes been trying his hardest, stevens said. but when i did come, it was game day. I understand, hey, its game day. Hes focused on the game. But today we had great conversations.
we shot the breeze by just talking about the campus, how theyre rebuilding. We talked about where he wants me to play same thing everybody preaches, same thing. We talked about basketball. We talked about (lsus) ben simmons tonight playing (basketball) against ut. It was just a nice experience talking to coach jones.
with plenty of teams now aggressively pursuing him following his decommitment from lsu, he said everybodys the same among the more than 20 schools pursuing him.
But he said hes giving strong consideration to tennessee, and he has been impressed by the direction of the vols program under jones.
theyre building. They're going up and up, stevens said. the record shows how coach jones is using his talent wisely and how hes taking the ut program back to the top. Its definitely a program that people are going to have to watch for in a couple years.
