He had originally planned on making his decision in the pre-isolation time frame after all of his official visits were completed. Even before the cancellation of March 21-22 weekend ND had an uphill battle to climb because he had the more recent unofficial visit to Clemson (January Junior Day) and the last official visit the week after ND's official visit.
After the cancellation of all recruiting visits and the NCAA imposed dead period due to COVID-19 the next piece of news to come out was that WS was about ready to make his decision. Again, I know that LT has put in a lot of work recruiting this young man in NC but Clemson had the more recent visit and has the multitude of other factors already discussed by others (recent national success, recruiting machine, etc). That would seem to favor Clemson if that were the case.
The last 4 weeks or so the updates that have come include CBs on 247 by some guy who covers LSU but then also Wiltfong on 3/12/2020 - right before visits even started. Rivals produced an article on April 3rd saying he was close to committing before the visits were put on hold. I think that favors the last school visited - unofficially or officially - and that was Clemson. Then Loy, after writing his piece on how well the recent virtual visit went, still endorses that Clemson led last week. A week ago Loy also said he still liked WS to ND but was closer to him not committing than being part of the class. After seeing all of that I began to wonder if he was maybe decided on Clemson but wanted to show respect to ND's efforts by at least continuing to visit before making an announcement for the Tigers.
Now, the above is, in my opinion, a reasonable glass half-empty view. The reasonable glass half-full view that I can also endorse is that he is a high academic kid with a strong family support that also values academics. He's got a great relationship with Lance Taylor and ND is throwing the kitchen sink at him. Getting this virtual official visit, talking with professors, talking with current players and commits, having parents talk with families of current players and commits. That's amazing work by ND. He's also hearing daily from Blake Fisher who is the biggest recruiter in a literal and figurative sense for ND right now.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think it's 50.1% Clemson, 49.9% ND. I hope that dynamic changes but I'm ready for it to stay this way, too.
