DeAndre Ayton is off the board sooner than expected.
The No. 1 player in the 2017 class has made his decision.
DeAndre Ayton will (maybe) play college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats, who he committed to on Tuesday. Ayton made his announcement on the evening edition of ESPN’s SportsCenter, which came to the surprise of everyone following his recruitment.
Picking Arizona was NOT the expectation, and no one saw Ayton making a decision within the first week of September, let alone picking these Wildcats. He’s previously stressed his desire to visit the Kentucky Wildcats among other schools, but he has yet to take any official visits.
The five-star center out of Phoenix’s Hillcrest Academy was down to Kentucky, Kansas and Arizona, though the Jayhawks had been viewed as his favorite for several months now.
A big reason why was all of the eligibility concerns surrounding Ayton, which caused UK to back off and take a hesitant approach in this recruitment. There were also rumors that Ayton had no plans or desire to attend college, but he has since stated that’s not true and he wants to go to make his mother happy.
In the end, this has been one of the weirdest recruitments we’ll see in the 2017 class, so it doesn’t seem all that surprising that, out of nowhere, he decided to commit to the school viewed as the third-place team in his recruitment.