Sting Factor: Justin Williams' decommitment from West Virginia

When a major program loses a key recruit, Rivals.com takes a look at how big of a blow it is to the respective school, analyzing it from a local and national level. To quantify the “sting” of each decommitment, we assign a score from one to 10, with one being no big deal and 10 being a catastrophic hit.

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West Virginia scored big in early July when four-star running back Justin Williams committed to the Mountaineers.

The Dallas (Ga.) East Paulding standout had just taken visits to West Virginia and Nebraska, had come home and considered those schools among others and made his choice. Over the summer, Williams looked great at numerous events including the Rivals camps.

But as the fall progressed, Williams started getting serious SEC interest. He recently visited Auburn and Tennessee. Alabama is showing new interest. Michigan just recently offered.

So in recent days, Williams reopened his recruitment and will again investigate all options. West Virginia is still on the table and it’s a school he liked a whole lot throughout his recruitment but the Mountaineers now have some more serious competition.

“It's a blow any time you lose a running back that you were on early and before others but that's the way recruiting goes sometimes. West Virginia will need to fill that spot and I expect several running backs will get calls in the coming weeks and I wouldn't entirely shut the door on a reunion.” - Keenan Cummings, WVSports.com

Sting factor: 7

“A lot of the discussion centering around Williams now is that he might want to stay closer to home and with these SEC opportunities potentially available in the coming weeks, he might have found the best of both worlds. That is a tough pill to swallow for the Mountaineers because they did everything right in recruiting the four-star running back: They identified him early, got him on campus, landed his commitment and it still might not be enough. So it goes sometimes in recruiting but West Virginia also has to win some of these battles especially when SEC programs come in this late. Williams is a very talented back and the door isn’t shut on West Virginia yet but my bet is that he ends up playing somewhere in the Southeast probably at Tennessee or Auburn and this one hurts the Mountaineers although there will be other running backs who they will recruit to take his place.” - Adam Gorney, Rivals National Recruiting Director

Sting factor: 8