Kansas football recruiting

Fresh off a big win on the gridiron Saturday night, the Kansas football team posted another significant victory on Monday morning, this time on the recruiting trail.

Justin Thurman, a running back from Tampa, Florida, in the class of 2025 who once received his first collegiate scholarship offer from KU, announced that he has flipped his commitment from Notre Dame to the Jayhawks.

Thurman, a four-star prospect on Rivals and three-star on 247Sports, had been committed to the Irish since August 2023. Now, he is KU’s second running back commitment after John Kelly from Cypress Christian School in Houston, and also joins another recent flip, Jaden Nickens, among KU’s highest-rated 2025 prospects on Rivals.

The 6-foot, approximately 185-pound Thurman attends Jesuit High School in Tampa, where in nine games played he has carried the ball 102 times for 529 yards and 11 touchdowns according to MaxPreps. He previously went to school at De Smet Jesuit in the St. Louis area before transferring in 2022.

After KU initially targeted Thurman in June 2022, he went on to receive offers from schools such as Auburn, Florida, Iowa, Kansas State, Missouri and Tennessee, among others. He now becomes the 16th member of KU’s 2025 class as part of a recruiting cycle somewhat more chaotic than last year’s, which has in recent times seen two prospects leave the Jayhawks (Juju Marks for Nebraska and Joeseph Skipworth for Mississippi State on Saturday night) and three more abandon commitments to other schools in favor of KU (Bryson Hayes from Nebraska, Nickens last Thursday from Oklahoma and now Thurman).

Notre Dame had recently added another running back by flipping Nolan James from Boston College a week prior to Thurman’s decommitment.

KU will still have a robust group of running backs after the departure of Lawrence native Devin Neal following the season. Daniel Hishaw Jr. and Sevion Morrison will both be sixth-year seniors next year, while redshirt freshman Johnny Thompson Jr. and true freshman Harry Stewart III have received plenty of buzz. The additions of both Kelly and Thurman also help KU account for losing Red Martel, who left the program in the spring after enrolling early.