Now that the final evaluation period has come to a close and the 2018 class has finished its travel ball career, we answer your questions in this week’s #TwitterTuesday mailbag.
We assess which prospects could be in line for a rankings bump, Kansas' chances with prospects beyond Quentin Grimes and how many 2018 prospects could be legit one-and-dones.
After the summer, we always like to take a few weeks to kind of decompress and let what we just finished watching in July sink in a little bit. After a few weeks, we’ll start to discuss 2018 -- as well as 2019 and an initial 2020 list -- rankings with an eye on updating them at the end of August or early in September.
When you are already ranked No. 30 like Nassir Little is, there is only but so much room to climb, but he deserves a nice boost when we update. A little further down the list, Nate Laszewski strikes me as a guy who is in need of a big bump. The rangy jump shooter was tremendous during July and is in position to push for a move all the way up to the national top 50 from his current spot of No. 100. Finally, one prospect currently outside of the Rivals150 to keep an eye on is athletic lefty wing Zion Griffin from Illinois.
This is a good question here, especially since Bill Self has already said that Kansas may need to sign as many as six players from the class of 2018.
You mentioned Quentin Grimes and the five-star guard is somebody the Jayhawks have the inside track for at this moment. In addition to Grimes, who can score and run an offense, they would like to find another point guard. Five-stars Jahvon Quinerly, Immanuel Quickley and Ayo Dosunmu are all in their sights, but Kansas’ best chances currently reside with a guy making a major run at five-star status in Devon Dotson.
I expect Kansas will at least get an official visit out of soon-to-be five-star wing Nassir Little and it has a good shot there -- though Monday night’s offer from North Carolina could throw a monkey wrench in everybody’s plans with Little. There are some who suggested in Vegas last week that the Jayhawks are in better shape than given credit for with 2018’s No. 3 ranked player Zion Williamson and top 40 center David McCormack is another guy it is right in the mix with.
It appears the class is going to be losing at least one and done/lottery type in Marvin Bagley III, who looks to be on his way to 2017. Then again, 2018 added R.J. Barrett on Monday to offset the eventual loss of Bagley.
If you are asking me how many are ready at this point to be considered legitimate one-and-done guys, I would say between five and six guys max. The 2018 class is a relatively average group in comparison to years past and it’s certainly not a monster like the 2016 that just produced 16 first-round picks in June’s NBA Draft. However, this is the new era of basketball and with the new two-way contracts expanding NBA rosters, we are going to start seeing more and more one-and-done players. So, with that in mind I’ll go ahead and guess that at least 12-15 players from 2018 will end up leaving for the NBA after one year and that at least half of them will be drafted in the Lottery.
Landing five-star point guard Darius Garland when he’s being chased by national powers like Duke, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky would be a monstrous recruiting win for Bryce Drew and his staff. It would prove that they can protect home turf against the titans of college basketball and it would net them an instant difference-maker.
If you land a guy like Garland, the hope is that he can also lure other top flight talent to Nashville with him. He’s said to be good friends with five-star shooting guard Romeo Langford and while landing Langford appears to be a longshot, perhaps Garland could at least get Vanderbilt in the game. Just as important, recruits coming up in future classes could see how the Vanderbilt staff handles a stud recruit like Garland and perhaps be more interested.
At No. 43 overall, I believe that we at Rivals.com currently have Joe Wieskamp at the higher end of the rankings scale in comparison to the other major recruiting networks, so it’s clear we like his game. The easy answer to this is that we just have to like him more than enough guys ranked ahead of him to get him to five-star status. But, that’s not what you are looking for and not how I want to approach this.
I thought Wieskamp looked very good when I saw him this summer. I like his size at the two, he’s a good athlete, he has good length and he is a very, very dangerous shooter from deep. I do think he could use his size and athleticism to his advantage a bit more, but overall there really aren’t many holes in his game. All that being said, we have him ranked pretty appropriately and he strikes me as a guy that should be a multiple-year starter at Iowa who should have a chance to compete for All-Big Ten type honors and perhaps end up in the NBA when his college days are over.
Andrew Nembhard has made the “move” to 2018. A five-star prospect in the class of 2019, Nembhard remains one in 2018 and he enters those rankings at No. 25 overall. Now, that could change by a few spots when we do a full adjustment of the rankings, but it’s a fair starting place.
Nembhard has good size, he has tremendous feel for the game and what I really like about him is that he’s a tremendous defender. I would expect Florida, Michigan, Gonzaga and Stanford to be among those who are most prominent in his recruitment.
