When the Time is Right

Pflugerville defensive end Alex Okafor is one of the Texas Longhorns top remaining targets from the 2009 class. He made it clear before his visit to Austin that a decision between the Texas, LSU and Stanford could come within a month. How close is he to pulling the trigger on a commitment?

“Right now, it’s sort of on the day-to-day,” Alex Okafor said. “Whenever I wake up in the morning and feel that it’s the right time and I’m 100 percent sure where I want to go, I’ll pretty much make my decision.”

Okafor has been down to three schools, Texas, LSU and Stanford, for quite some time now. He has taken junior day visits at all three but still doesn’t have a clear cut favorite.

“Not really, it’s still between those three right now,” Okafor said when asked if any of his top schools were standing out more than the others.

Mack Brown and company made it clear to Okafor that he was their number one target at defensive end for the class of 2009. He left Austin very impressed with the program, but how did his visits to LSU and Stanford go?

“The visit with LSU went pretty well,” Okafor said. “They had a lot of kids there, but the coaches took the time to bring me into their office and I got to talk to pretty much all of the coaches. It was a good experience, and I got to learn more about LSU and what they had to offer.”

“As far as Stanford goes, I was really impressed with how their junior day went. They only had about 12 kids there, so it was really selective. There was really a small group of kids, and you really got to talk to some of the coaches. Actually, they also invited about 12 professors down there to talk to the kids. That really impressed me.”

The academic side of things at Stanford made a big impact on Okafor.

“That made a huge impact,” Okafor said about the professors attending Stanford’s junior day. “The fact that they took time out of their daily lives to come down and talk to the kids that are not even committed to Stanford shows that they just enjoy their athletes.”

While helping Pflugerville advance to the state championship game this past fall, Okafor had 72 tackles and seven sacks. He runs a 4.67 40-yard dash, and was named all-District and all-Central Texas.