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Monday / December 23.
  • Calipari, Hamilton to Watch Wiggins Sunday

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    Kentucky coach John Calipari and Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton will be front and center Sunday to watch star prospect Andrew Wiggins, Huntington Prep coach Rob Fulford told SNY.tv.

    North Carolina is also expected to be there Sunday, the first day coaches can watch high school players, but Fulford said he wasn’t sure if Roy Williams was coming or not.

    The Louisville Courier-Journal first reported the visits for Wiggins.

    At this point, those are the only three schools seriously involved with the 6-foot-7 Wiggins, who may or may not reclassify to 2013 from 2014.

    “He’s open,” Fulford said. “Those are the only three I hear from.”

    Mike George, Wiggins’s coach with the CIA Bounce AAU team, said he’d like to see other schools recruit Wiggins but they may simply feel they have no realistic chance.

    “I’ll say this as my statement on his recruitment, these college coaches need to stop assuming and take a chance and recruit him,” George told Rivals.com. “A lot of people assume that he’s going to Florida State because of his parents or Kentucky or whatever because it’s presented like that in the media. All of these assumptions are made but it has never come out of his mouth.

    “These other coaches aren’t even trying.”

    One high-major Division 1 assistant told SNY.tv he is shocked more schools aren’t recruiting Wiggins.

    “Most people think it is a done deal to Kentucky,” he said.

    Wiggins’s parents attended Florida State and Kentucky was the first school to recruit him.

    During an exclusive interview with SNY.tv at the Nike Global Challenge in July, Wiggins said Florida State and Kentucky were “after me the hardest.”

    Wiggins has no visits planned right now because he has yet to take the SAT.

    Sunday figures to be a busy day for Calipari as he is also slated to have a home visit in Texas with Julius Randle. The 6-9 power forward recently told SNY.tv he could imagine joining a potential blockbuster Kentucky class that included Wiggins and the Harrison Twins.

    Huntington Prep senior center Dominic Woodson and sophomore wing Montague Gill-Caesar will also take an unofficial Saturday to Kentucky, as reported by the Courier-Journal.

    The 6-9 Woodson has a final 10 of Kentucky,  N.C. State, Baylor, Texas A&M, Connecticut, Memphis, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Rhode Island and Oklahoma.

    “He’s a very skilled big that can step out and make shots,” Fulford told SNY.tv. “He’s a great passer for his size. He’s working very hard on his conditioning and changing his body. Dominic has a huge upside and has been great up to this point.”

    Gill-Caeser is a 6-5 Canadian wing who has improved practicing against Wiggins.

    “He’s a top-20 kid; he’s really good,” Fulford told the Courier-Journal. “The thing about him right now is that him and Andrew are getting so much better going against each other every day. He doesn’t back down from Andrew, which is good for Andrew, and it’s obviously good for Teki to play against the best player in the country every day.

    “… He’s not as athletic as Andrew, but he can shoot it. He’s young. He’s athletic. He’s a scorer. He’s kind of the next one from over there (in Canada).”

    Finally, Louisville assistant Wyking Jones as well as N.C. State will be at Huntington Prep Sunday for 6-9 Nigerian big man Moses Kingsley, the Courier-Journal reported.

    Fulford compared Kingsley to Louisville center Gorgui Dieng, a potential Big East Preseason Player of the Year.

    “They’re very similar,” Fulford told the paper. “Gorgui was probably a better shot-blocker at this stage, but Moses is a little better offensively at this stage.”

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    Adam Zagoria is a Basketball Insider who covers basketball at all levels. A contributor to The New York Times and SportsNet New York (SNY), he is also the author of two books and is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. His articles have appeared in ESPN The Magazine, SLAM, Sheridan Hoops, Basketball Times and in newspapers nationwide. He also won an Emmy award for his work on the SNY mini-documentary on Syracuse guard Tyus Battle. A veteran Ultimate Frisbee player, he has competed in numerous National and World Championships and, perhaps more importantly, his teams won the Westchester Summer League (WSL) championships in 2011 and 2013. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and children.

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