For the first, and only time, in his recruitment, Toriano Pride decided to drop a top schools list last week.

Pride, who says this will be the only time he narrows his recruitment down before he commits, cut 21 schools off of his offer sheet, and is now down to seven programs. The contenders in the Pride Sweepstakes are Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio State and Oregon.

The top-20 cornerback on Rivals spoke with us about his top group, why the Buckeyes made the cut for him, the message from Ryan Day’s staff, and much more.

“I just wanted to shorten my list so the [recruiting process] could slow down a little bit,” Pride told BuckeyeGrove. “Those seven schools, me and my family feel very comfortable with, and we’ve built a relationship with them for over a year.”

Ohio State is certainly a program Pride has been familiar with for quite some time. He received an offer from the staff back in August, has already been on campus, and they've done an excellent job of recruiting in his area over the past few years.

Led by Kerry Coombs and Ryan Day, it was a no-brainer for Pride to include the Buckeyes in his top seven on Friday.

“I love Ohio State,” Pride said. “I love Coach Coombs and I like Coach Day. They’re one of the schools where I can tell they’re not trying to sell me a dream. I like how they develop DBs, player development… I just like them. I like how they run the defense and they compete for a national championship every single year. You can’t beat that.”