Pokes Lose 240-pound Running Back, 4-Star Recruit To Portal

LARAMIE -- Two more Cowboys have hit the open market.

One is the school's second-ever four-star recruit. The other, a 240-pound running back who gave Wyoming an early spark in last season's Arizona Bowl.

Deshawn Woods and Jordon Vaughn Friday entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, joining teammates Caden Becker, Hank Gibbs and Emmanuel Pregnon since college football's version of free agency began April 15.

Former walk-on wide receiver Evan Hiremath is also in the portal.

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The number of transfers since the regular-season finale now sits at 15.

Woods, who originally committed to Missouri out of Omaha Central High School, never saw the field during his brief year-plus stint in Laramie. Academic issues sidelined him this spring. The 6-foot-5, 285-pound offensive tackle was the No. 1 recruit in the state of Nebraska, according to rivals.com. That website also dubbed him the 14th best guard in the nation.

Woods fielded a ton of offers from the who's who of the college football world, including LSU, Miami, Penn State, Texas A&M, Florida, Tennessee and many, many others.

On late signing day in February of 2022, UW head coach Craig Bohl called Woods a "16-framer," referring to how impressive his game film was.

"I can tell you guys -- I think you know our program well enough -- we're not into recruiting stars," Bohl said that day. "We're into recruiting players. This guy's a heck of a player and I think he's going to really benefit from our environment here at Wyoming and, I believe we're going to benefit from having him in our program."

Since the internet era of ranking prep athletes, Wyoming had landed just one four-star player. That was Jon Hawk, a 6-foot-6, 310-pound offensive guard from Garden City CC (Kansas), who came to Laramie in 2002.

Like Woods, he never played a snap.

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The same can't be said for Vaughn, who got his first shot last December in Tucson. The hulking then-redshirt freshman rushed for 67 yards on 16 attempts in that 30-27 overtime loss to Ohio. Vaughn, a Houston-area native, opened the scoring, cruising into the end zone untouched from 17 yards out in the first quarter. He added another five-yard touchdown run in the fourth.

The three-star prospect also received a lot of interest out of Manvel High School. Wyoming's Front Range rival Air Force extended an offer. So did Army, Navy, Rice, Louisiana Tech and North Texas. A number of Ivy League programs also courted the future engineer, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others.

"Jordon is a big thumper," Bohl said last spring. "He's a great straight-line guy, not great maybe with his lateral movement, but he's a big, big strong guy."

Former teammate Garrett Crall compared tackling Vaughn to bringing down Tennessee running back Derrick Henry.

"He's a big dude," he said. "He's been working really hard in the winter. He's one of those guys that's going to run between the tackles. He's a smart guy, so it's going to be interesting to see how well he can kind of put his physicality and also his capability together to be able to read blocks, learn and just be able to go straight forward and punish."

Vaughn has three seasons of eligibility remaining. Woods has four.

The spring transfer portal window will close April 30.

Players who have left the program:

^ - RB - Jordon Vaughn

^ OL - Deshawn Woods

^ WR - Evan Hiremath

* OL - Emmanuel Pregnon

^ DE - Caden Becker

^ QB - Hank Gibbs

^ OL - Mykel Janise (Louisiana Tech)

^ DE - Akili Bonner

^ WR - Tyrese Grant