4-star OT Oluwatosin Babalade pushes back commitment

On3 imageby:Drew Schott07/28/22

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Hyattsville (Md.) DeMatha Catholic four-star offensive tackle Oluwatosin Babalade is no longer revealing his commitment on July 31. The 6-foot-5, 305 pound prospect shared over social media on Thursday that he is delaying his announcement. He also said that a new date for his commitment will be given soon.

Babalade is the No. 271 overall prospect and No. 20 offensive tackle in the 2023 On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He is also rated as the No. 7 player in Maryland.

On3 ranks Babalade higher as the No. 167 overall prospect, the No. 15 offensive tackle and the No. 3 player in Maryland. The only in-state players rated ahead of Babalade are Baltimore (Md.) St. Frances Academy four-star EDGE and LSU commit Dashawn Womack and Fort Washington (Md.) DeMatha Catholic four-star defensive lineman and Ohio State commit Jason Moore.

The four-star recently took five official visits to Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio State, Rutgers and South Carolina. According to the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine, the Gamecocks have a commanding lead to land Babalade’s commitment at 81.5%. The team with the next-best odds is the Terrapins at 4.6%.

The RPM was released to the public in December. The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. 

It factors in machine learning, social sentiment, visits and historical trends. However, expert predictions are still a big piece of the RPM equation.

During his official visit to South Carolina on June 10, he was impressed by the environment in Columbia. He enjoyed the food on campus as well.

“Yeah, definitely the food, I think I gained like 10 pounds but I’m going to lose it during the summer so I’m good,” Babalade told GamecockCentral’s Collyn Taylor. “Yeah, but everything stood out, everything was good. The players, I was able to talk to them, but I think it’s great.”

Babalade has an On3 NIL Valuation of $9.8K. The On3 NIL Valuation is an index that looks to set the standard market value for both high school and college-level athletes. The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.