Florida basketball recruiting: Gators in contact with 4-star in-state big man

Florida basketball recruiting is starting to stir as Todd Golden is looking to add talent to the Gators roster on his quest to bring Gator hoops back to prominence.

The latest development is that the Gators are in contact with a 4-star big man attending The Rock School in Gainesville.

We’re talking about Ryan Jones, a consensus top 20 power forward in the 2024 class, and a composite top 70 player.

Jones gets a lot of respect from all the different sites in the industry, but ESPN’s database is the highest on him. They have Ryan ranked as the 46th-best player in the country, the 8th-best power forward, and the 4th-best player coming out of Florida.

Ryan has a great presence down low, standing at 6’8”-225. He’s a very physical player and does a good job of using his strength to dominate the paint, and still has room to add more mass before he gets to college.

With the size he already has, he’s a great scorer down low and finishes with ferocity.

In addition to being a paint scorer, Jones is serviceable from deep, always ready to take an open look if one presents itself.

So far in his recruitment, the Gators lead in visits from Jones, which makes sense given that he’s from their backyard. He’s seen the Gators twice, and schools like NC State, UNC, FSU, and Duke once.

Despite proximity and visit, the Gators aren’t very high on the favorites list to land Ryan. The leader is NC State, with a 72.7% chance to land him per On3’s prediction machine.

Todd Golden and the Gators have a lot of ground to make up in Ryan’s recruitment if they want to secure his services.

But given the momentum that Golden has had recruiting the transfer portal, it wouldn’t surprise me to see that leak over into recruiting high schoolers.

Keep up with Florida basketball recruiting at Hail Florida Hail.