Mohamed Bamba is set to take his official visit to Kentucky on Friday and Saturday, and the 6-foot-11 big man from Westtown (PA) School will be on hand for the game against No. 24 South Carolina on Saturday evening (6 p.m. ESPN).
Bamba has trimmed his list to Kentucky, Duke, Texas and Michigan. He has already visited Texas and Michigan and plans to trip to Duke Feb. 26-28, with a decision sometime in late March or early April. Bamba, who may not end up taking his fifth official visit, will play in the McDonald’s All-American Game on March 29 in Chicago.
“Yeah, definitely probably toward the end of March, early April,” he said last weekend at the Hoophall Classic. “I kind of want to get home after spring break. I kind of want to do final visits with the coaches and then make a decision after that.”
Kentucky coach John Calipari visited Bamba last week at his school and also saw him play in December in Pottstown, Pa.
Mo Bamba with this reverse dunk in front of Calipari and the other coaches. pic.twitter.com/pcCqvOdBN1
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) December 4, 2016
Several fellow McDonald’s All-Americans are in Bamba’s ear about joining them on campus, with Kentucky-bound point guard Quade Green, Duke-bound forward Wendell Carter and Texas-bound point guard Matt Coleman all saying last weekend they are recruiting the Harlem native.
Bamba said Green had been “relentless” in his recruitment.
“They’re coming after me pretty hard,” Bamba said in reference to both Green and new Kentucky guard Hamidou Diallo, both of whom played with Bamba on the gold-medal winning USA U18 team last summer. “I’m going to use Hami as pretty much an informant because he’s there and he knows what it’s like and he’s going literally straight out of high school to start midseason so I’m going to use him as a resource.”
Kentucky already has Nick Richards, Jarred Vanderbilt and P.J. Washington committed in the frontcourt in 2017 and could return Wenyen Gabriel, Sacha Killeya-Jones, Isaac Humphries and Tai Wynyard.
“It’s been mainly the same pitch as the summer,” Bamba told Scout.com of Kentucky in December.
“Positionless [basketball] and their track record right now. What are the three bigs in the NBA when you think Kentucky? Anthony Davis, KAT [Karl-Anthony Towns] and you think DeMarcus Cousins. Their track record is unbelievable.”
