2020 RB Zachary Evans Spurns Gators, Enrolls at TCU

The roller coaster recruitment of the top 2020 back has finally came to an end.

Just like that, Florida has missed on yet another 2020 running back target, as Zachary Evans has decided to attend Texas Christian University. 

247Sports’ Jeremy Clark was the first to report the news, as the number two running back in the 2020 class is staying home in Texas and has enrolled in classes at TCU in Fort Worth. 

To say Evans' recruitment was dramatic is an understatement. Evans was previously committed to and signed with Georgia, but was released from his national letter of intent in January. The five-star took visits to LSU, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Tennessee following his release, and was scheduled to take one to Florida on March 20th before the coronavirus pandemic shut in-person recruiting down. 

It was widely thought that if Evans took a visit to Florida that he would end up enrolling with the Gators, but that plan never came to fruition. Unfortunately for the Gators, the NCAA continued to delay the recruiting visits and ultimately ran out of time to get Evans to Gainesville for the first time. 

Florida had also established a stronger connection to Evans with Tim Brewster, who recruited the talented back when he worked for Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M, but it just wasn't enough to lure the back out of Texas. 

With the miss of Evans, the Gators are left empty-handed for 2020 high school running backs, as the Gators missed on Demarcus Bowman, Ashaad Clayton, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Jaylen Knighton, among others. 

Despite the misses for the Gators, they still took a running back in five-star transfer Lorenzo Lingard, who transferred to Florida from Miami in early January.