Tennessee football: Vols 2020 recruiting class by the numbers

Number of recruits by state

Tennessee: 10

Georgia: 4

Alabama: 3

Florida: 2

Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina: 1

In 2019, Jeremy Pruitt put a heavy emphasis on the state of Georgia when it came to recruiting, and it was clear he was trying to re-establish that pipeline. Tennessee football had nine of its 23 commitments from Georgia that year, nearly twice as many as the No. 2 state, which was the state of Tennessee then. This year, however, Pruitt relied much more heavily on in-state talent.

Maybe the talent just got better in Tennessee this year, but the Vols have more than twice as many in-state players as they do from any other individual state. They have 10 from Tennessee overall, and their strongest region is from the Memphis area, where they have three four-stars from Whitehaven and two other players from Briarcrest.

Outside of West Tennessee, the Vols have four players from East Tennessee, including one from the Tri-Cities region in Greeneville and three from the Knoxville area, two of whom are from Knoxville and one from Maryville. Only one of the 10 recruits, four-star defensive back Keshawn Lawrence, is from Nashville.

Outside of Tennessee, though, the Georgia pipeline remained, with four players, including five-star quarterback Harrison Bailey, coming from there. Pruitt kept his connections to the state of Alabama as well with three from there along with his staff connections to the state of Florida, where he got two players.

Getting a guy from Mississippi and South Carolina each is part of the UT tradition as well, and they were able to stretch into the Midwest and the DMV with an Illinois and Maryland player. If they do add Zachary Evans, that puts them in the Texas market. One difference, this year, though, is they didn’t get into California at all.