Transfer Portal Sting Factor: Akayleb Evans

When a major program misses out on a key transfer portal recruit, Rivals.com takes a look at how big of a blow it is to the respective school, analyzing it from a national level. To quantify the “sting” of each transfer portal recruiting miss, we assign a score from 1 to 10, with one being no big deal and 10 being a catastrophic hit.

THE STORYLINE

After playing at Tulsa, there was minimal buzz amongst fans when Akayleb Evans entered the transfer portal, but for college coaches across the country he quickly became a priority.

Evans took his time with the process, doing his homework on each of the growing list of offers he was receiving. He finally trimmed his list of top schools down to Missouri, Notre Dame, Texas, Texas Tech and Jackson State, but it was well known that he was focusing his time and efforts on the Tigers and Irish. Georgia also jumped in with a late offer, but weren't able to make up enough ground to truly compete.

The Irish made Evans a priority, hoping to bolster their talented, yet extremely young secondary. They hosted him on an official visit in early June and while he left campus without committing, there was still optimism in South Bend.

However, Notre Dame was never able to make up for the relationship that Evans had with new Missouri cornerbacks coach Aaron Fletcher, who had coach him at Tulsa. The Tigers also put the full-court press on Evans after losing multiple defensive backs (Jarvis Ware, Chris Mills, and JaDarrius Perkins) to the portal. All of this resulted in his commitment to Missouri.

**********

NATIONAL REACTION

This one hurts Notre Dame a bit especially after it looked like they had him on Thursday night of last week. When Mizzou offered his teammate Allie Green that seemed to turn the tide here but oddly enough Green hasn't jumped on board. So maybe Evans was a Mizzou lean the whole time, who knows? The relationship with coach Fletcher is a key one and Evans has the talent to impact and potentially start right away. Notre Dame is okay in the secondary but he would have helped depth and his versatility would have been key.

Sting Factor: 5 out of 10