The recruiting for players in the 2016 class is all but done at this point for college basketball programs, with the exception of Marques Bolden and a few others. Coaches more or less know what their rosters will look like next season aside from transfers and guys dropping out of the NBA Draft.
Now coaches can start to focus on recruiting players in the 2017 class. While some players in 2017 have already committed, the majority are still available. The best player on the board for 2017 is DeAndre Ayton, who is considered one of the best prospects in quite a long time. Ayton, though, isn't receiving all that much interest from top schools as he has eligibility concerns surrounding him.
There have been rumors circulating around Ayton that he might look to skip college and instead take a year to play post-graduate in high school or go overseas. Thon Maker just did this same thing and was recently ruled eligible for the 2016 NBA Draft, so this can certainly be a possibility, but Ayton says he will attend college.
"They think I'm not going to college," Ayton said. "But I have to go to college. My mom wants me to go to college, and that's what I'm looking for. No eligibility concerns. I'm NCAA eligible, so I don't know what the problem is."
With a player like Ayton, who is considered the consensus number one player in the 2017 class, top schools like Duke and Kentucky are usually all over him, but that is not happening here. Ayton says that Kentucky's interest right now is mediocre at best, and the same could be said of Duke.
The one school that is showing a lot of interest in Ayton is Kansas and head coach Bill Self. This shouldn't come as a major surprise to anyone, as Self regularly takes risks on players with eligibility concerns. He has done so in the past with Josh Selby, Cheick Diallo and Cliff Alexander to name a few. In the past Ayton has said his top three schools would be Kentucky, Duke and Kansas, but now he says it's just Kansas based on the way he is being recruited.
The Phoenix native has mentioned that he wants to follow Anthony Davis' path to the NBA before, which would include one year at Kentucky, but head coach John Calipari doesn't seem all that interested in Ayton. It is still early in the process for players in the 2017 class, so a lot can change with the top schools, but it doesn't seem like they will budge. That would leave Kansas with an extremely talented player if he does commit there; in fact, decide to spend at least one year in college. Ayton is a 7-foot power forward who is extremely versatile and should be able to make a huge impact as a freshman. You can watch his highlights below: