Durand Scott is down to three schools and could decide relatively soon.
The 6-foot-4 Scott, the No. 9 shooting guard in the Class of 2009 according to Rivals, will choose from among Miami, UConn and Pittsburgh, the three schools to which he has taken officials. Planned official visits to UCLA and Tennessee never happened and those schools are out of the mix.
“There’s no more visits scheduled. This is pretty much it,” Dwayne Mitchell, Scott’s coach with the New York Gauchos, said Tuesday by phone. “It’s pretty much the three that he visited. We’ll try and make a decision that makes sense.”
Scott is coming off a badly sprained ankle suffered in Sunday’s Metro Classic in Long Island and will get an MRI on it Tuesday. Mitchell said rehabbing the ankle was Scott’s immediate priority.
“Unfortunately, he had a little injury when we got back and that became the focus rather than him making his decision,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell accompanied Scott on his trip this past weekend to Miami, and Scott went straight from the airport to the game.
As for the visit, Mitchell said, “He enjoyed his visit.”
What’s not to like about Miami?
“They had a little scrimmage, we got to see the campus,” MItchell said. Miami’s Miami. It’s always different to leave a place where people are fully dressed and there’s a different dress code.”
Prior to the Miami visit, Scott took officials to both UConn and Pitt, and said he enjoyed those as well.
Scott’s former Rice teammate, Kemba Walker, is a frosh at UConn, one of several built-in advantages the school may have, along with its proximity.
“Kemba is like a brother to me and that’s forever,” Scott told the Journal Inquirer after the UConn visit. “He’s going to do college a year before me, so he’s definitely a person I can get advance from and bounce ideas off of. But a person should never go to a college just because another person’s there. When you come down to it, it’s your life, not that other person’s life.”
As for the Pitt visit last month, Scott joined Pitt commits Dante Taylor of National Christian and Lamar Patterson of St. Benedict’s. During the Iowa-Pitt football game that weekend, the basketball team was honored with its rings for winning the Big East Tournament.
“It went really well,” Scott said then. “I had fun out there. I met the coaching staff. I know a couple guys out there, Travon Woodall and Ashton Gibbs and Levance Fields, so I felt very comfortable. I felt right at home.”
Scott was playing in the is8 playoffs this month when he was supposed to visit UCLA and Tennessee, but Mitchell said those visits didn’t work out.
“They kind of backed out on their own,” he said.
Now Scott will develop a timetable for a decision in conjunction with Mitchell and Rice head coach Moe Hicks.
“I’ll probably talk to him sometime between today and tomorrow (Wednesday),” MItchell said. “He is hobbling around on his ankle.
“We will get an idea for a timetable. It’s not going to be anything long. We want to get an idea of what he likes. He’s going to pretty much go with his heart and choose the school that will be the most appropriate place.
“It’s up to him. I know that my advice to him will be to decide so that way he can move on and concentrate on his academics.”
