One of the nation’s leading rushers in high school football will make his college decision on Wednesday.
Midland Valley (SC) senior running back Traevon Dunbar announced on X (formerly known as Twitter) Tuesday evening that he would be announcing his college choice on Wednesday.
The 5-foot-10, 200-pound tailback rolled up 3,051 rushing yards and 42 touchdowns on 272 carries without a single fumble. His single season rushing total easily set a school record and placed him at No. 8 on Maxpreps.com’s national rushing yardage leaderboard.
Listed as a 3-star prospect, Dunbar’s offer list includes 13 Power 5 and Division I schools, including West Virginia, Penn State, Ole Miss, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Arkansas, among others. He took an official visit to West Virginia during the weekend of Dec. 9, and 247Sports is predicting him as a “100%” lock to commit to the Mountaineers.
What Dunbar could bring to Morgantown
If Dunbar does pledge to West Virginia, the Mountaineers will be getting one of the most productive players in recent South Carolina high school football history. Dunbar ran for a combined 4,960 yards and 70 touchdowns in just his sophomore and senior seasons alone. That’s not including an injury-shortened junior campaign where he ran for 587 yards and six touchdowns in just five games.
Through his four-year high school career, Dunbar has averaged more than a first down per carry, cumulatively. His hard-charging, north-and-south running style shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he has good breakaway speed and is nimble enough to make open field tacklers miss.
His ground game production wasn’t just empty yards, as he helped Midland Valley to its first-ever undefeated regular season and first region championship since 2010.
He hits holes with reckless abandon and can quickly accelerate to top speed which helps him routinely run away from defenders. He rarely goes down on initial contact, and is the kind of back that seems to always fall forward.
Why West Virginia seems a good fit
Perhaps the fact that West Virginia is Dunbar’s only official visit gives recruiting aficionados confidence in saying he’s almost certain to commit and sign with the Mountaineers.
If he does, he’d push West Virginia’s 2024 class to 20 — barring other signing day signees of course. Only one running back resides on this current recruiting class. His name is Diore Hubbard, a 5-foot-11, 185-pounder out of Lincoln High in Gahanna, Ohio. Also a 3-star prospect, Hubbard compares favorable with Dunbar both in stature and style.
It seems to jive with how WVU offensive coordinator and running back coach Chat Scott wants to continue overhauling what had been a pass-heavy attack over the last four or five seasons.
The 2023 version of Mountaineer football featured dual-threat quarterback Garrett Greene who tossed for 2,178 yards and 15 touchdowns but also ran for 708 more yards and 13 rushing scores. He was the third leading rusher on the team behind running backs CJ Donaldson (798 yards) and Jahiem White (792 yards).
Donaldson and White are a freshman-sophomore tandem. But Hubbard, and the potential addition of Dunbar provide depth — and perhaps eventual stardom — in the downhill run game.
Of course this could all be much ado about nothing as Dunbar could decide to go another route. Regardless, whichever school lands him will have a tough-as-nails, relentlessly rugged ball carrier to add to its running back room, and we should soon be seeing a lot of Mr. Dunbar on Saturdays.
