Florida football recruiting: Promising defensive end Justus Boone commits to Gators

While Florida’s men’s basketball team was in the midst of routing one of Florida football’s top rivals on Wednesday, the Florida Gators of the gridiron repaid the effort by landing a new commit, three-star South Carolina defensive end Justus Boone.

Boone, who wears the number six and styles his Instagram name after the two-x spelling of it used by former Florida terror Dante Fowler Jr., cited head coach Dan Mullen, defensive line coach David Turner, and assistant director of player personnel David Cooper in his tweet announcing his commitment.

Boone is rated a four-star prospect by ESPN, but is only a three-star in the eyes of 247Sports and Rivals, leaving him at a three-star rating in the 247Sports Composite. The rating, here, may be less important than the provenance, given that Boone is playing for Sumter, a school in the same region that produced Jadeveon Clowney, and in fact dominated Clowney’s alma mater of Rock Hill last fall.

What pops off the screen in Boone’s highlight reel is mostly power, with a hint of quickness. Five plays in, he’s rocked four offensive linemen back on their heels with bull rushes and come off unblocked to meet one read option at the mesh point.

If Boone can exert that sort of power as a 250-pound high school senior with a still-developing body, the sort of good weight he could put on in Florida’s strength and conditioning program might make him a menace even before Turner’s tutelage, which helped more than a few Florida linemen in 2019.

Boone is Florida’s 12th commitment in its growing 2020 class, which now sits at No. 3 nationally and No. 1 in the SEC.