Decision Day: Georgia, Notre Dame or Ohio State for WR Rico Flores Jr?
It’s decision day for Folsom (Calif.) High class of 2023 wide receiver Rico Flores Jr., a top Notre Dame target. After Flores’ announcement, make sure to stay locked in at BlueandGold.com for extensive coverage regardless of his school of choice.
Date: July 3
Time: 3 p.m. ET
Watch: Live stream on Flores’ Instagram page
Finalists: Georgia, Notre Dame, Ohio State
Discussion: The Lou Somogyi Board
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Does Notre Dame lead for Flores?
The answer is a resound yes according to the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM) at 97.9 percent. The reason for the Irish’s big lead per the RPM is largely due to three On3 recruiting insiders — including Blue & Gold’s own Mike Singer — logging a prediction for Flores to choose Notre Dame.
On3’s RPM was released to the public in early 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, expert predictions, social sentiment, visits and historical trends.
Singer made his pick back on May 12. On that same day, Flores narrowed his recruitment down to three schools — Georgia, Notre Dame and Ohio State — while also announcing a commitment date of July 3. He set up official visit dates to see all three schools in June, but he only ended up taking one of those trips, and that was Notre Dame the weekend of June 10-12. His visits to Georgia and Ohio State were cancelled due to undisclosed reasons.
His official visit to Notre Dame was his first trip to South Bend.
“Seeing the campus, the facilities, getting to hang out with the coaches for a longer period of time, being with the players who go there now and the other recruits,” Flores said when asked about the highlights of his visit. “It was good building relationships overall. I got a feel for everything and saw what my future would be like if I attend Notre Dame.”
Flores ranks as the No. 171 overall player and No. 28 wide receiver per the 2023 On3 Consensus. He’s also the No. 12 player from his home state of California.
Notre Dame currently has 17 commitments in its 2023 class, which ranks No. 2 nationally per the 2023 Consensus Football Team Recruiting Rankings. Stay tuned this afternoon to see if the Irish are able to land commit No. 18.
Along with his finalists, Flores holds offers from the likes of Alabama, LSU, Michigan State, Oregon, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas, USC and Washington.
Flores is committed to playing in the 2023 All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas.
