By ADAM ZAGORIA
The next few weeks are shaping up to be life-changing for Charles Bediako.
The 6-foot-10, 218-pound Canadian big man will head south of the border to IMG Academy (FL) later this week for his final year of high school. He then plans to cut his college list from 10 a couple of week after that, with an eye toward making a college decision sometime in early 2021.
“I head down on Friday [to IMG],” Bediako, ranked the No. 3 center in 2021 by 247Sports.com, said Monday by phone from Hamilton, Ontario. “I’m excited to get down to Florida and start working.”
After previously playing at Andrews Osborne Academy in Ohio, Bediako felt he would be best suited spending his final season facing stiffer competition.
“What pretty much made me want to go down there was the facilities and I just kind of wanted to test the waters down there,” he said. “The school that I was at previously was good, but I felt I needed to be challenged a bit more. So the opportunity was there and I made the decision to come down.
“I just want want to get my body right so I’m ready for college and there are also some more skills I can learn, life skills.”
In terms of his recruitment, Bediako has a top 10 of Memphis, Alabama, Texas, Baylor, Maryland, Duke, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio State and USC. He has recently done Zoom calls with Duke, Michigan, Alabama, Baylor, Texas, and Tennessee.
“Every school’s been doing their part,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a real frontrunner as of right now, they all pretty much say the same thing. Some schools talk to me a bit more than others but it’s all part of the process.
He plans to cut his list “sometime by mid-September,” he said. “That’s the plan, maybe five or six [schools].”
As far as a commitment date, Bediako, who stands 7 feet with shoes, is eyeing early 2021.
“The original plan was to commit sometime in November before this whole pandemic stuff, but hopefully if all goes well maybe probably February or March,” he said.
In the meantime, he wants to work on “my face-up game, guarding the perimeter a bit and also just my ball-handling. I want to get bigger or stronger.
“I want to be a stretch-five or four.”
There are an increasing number of Canadian NBA players, with several in the bubble, including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort of the Thunder and Jamal Murray of the Nuggets.
Bediako would like to follow in their footsteps in a couple of years.
“To play in the NBA,” he said, “that’s one of my goals.”
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