SUWANEE, Ga. –– There have been few big man more impressive than DeAndre Ayton over the past year.
The Class of 2017 7-footer from the Bahamas led his California Supreme team to a 3-2 record at the Nike EYBL stop here, and a 10-6 record over the course of the four sessions on the EYBL circuit, averaging 19.5 points and 11.5 rebounds per game.
The No. 1 ranked player in the nation — and the potential No. 1 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft — has recently maintained that Kansas is the only school really recruiting him. But now he says he has been hearing from quite a few schools recently.
“There have been a lot of schools working hard actually,” Ayton told SNY.tv. “I’ve heard from Kentucky, Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA. Kentucky and Kansas, though, I hear from them a lot, Arizona too.”
Ayton plans to visit Arizona before Peach Jam in July.
“I’ll be going to Arizona in June for a visit,” Ayton said. “That’s a definite.”
A target time for Ayton to take the official visits will be during his senior season at Hillcrest Prep (AZ).
“I’ll be taking most of my official visits next year, during my senior year,” Ayton said. “I want to take visits to Kansas, Arizona and probably Kentucky. I will have more coming, I just want to feel all of the schools out first.”
Kansas has produced its share of big men over the years, most recently sending Perry Ellis and Cheick Diallo to the NBA Draft.
Arizona has recently produced bigs like Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarczewski.
And Kentucky has featured a number of future NBA bigs, including newly minted NBA Rookie of the Year Karl-Anthony Towns and NBA All-Star DeMarcus Cousins.
Ayton says that the relationship that he has with coaches will be a big deciding factor in the school that he decides to attend.
“I’m going to be looking at the coaches,” Ayton said. “They’re all the top programs in the country, I know that. I just want to look at my relationships with the coaches.”
With a debate in high gear about who the top big man in the country is, Ayton says that it is purely just friendly competition between Mohamed Bamba, Wendell Carter Jr. and himself. (Carter Jr. told SNY.tv that he plans to attend college with Gary Trent Jr., while Bamba and CArter Jr. have also had conversations about going to school together.)
“I haven’t seen Mohamed play in a while because he’s been hurt,” said Ayton, who lost to Bamba and the PSA Cardinals at the EYBL event in Brooklyn in April. “When he plays he’s everywhere though. Wendell is a beast. too. I’ve played against him since we were in eighth grade. Definitely, it’s a friendly competition.”
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