Texas hosted a handful of unofficial visitors over the weekend, including highly sought-after offensive lineman Javonne Shepherd.
The Houston North Forest standout said it was a good visit overall, and one of the highlights was his conversation with Texas head coach Tom Herman.
“What stood out the most about the visit was the talk with coach Herman,” Shepherd said. “Also the talk about the academic program, those types of things.
“Mostly we were talking about my major, things like that. I want to major engineering and business.”
The 6-6, 285-pound Shepherd holds close to 20 scholarship offers. This weekend’s visit to Texas moved the Longhorns near the top of his early leaderboard.
“Right now they stand in my top five picks,” Shepherd said. “Really it was just a must-visit school right now. I just had to go visit.”
Along with Texas, Shepherd said Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama and “probably” LSU are schools standing out. He’d like to make a decision sometime this summer and said he may return to Austin for the Longhorns’ spring football game in April.
The Longhorns will face some tough competition in trying to land Shepherd. New Texas offensive line coach Herb Hand is making him a priority and spent some time over the weekend showing Shepherd how he could help the Texas program.
“I talked to coach Hand. He’s a very cool guy,” Shepherd said. “We went over some things about football, some film and just seeing the dudes that he put in the NFL.”
