Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self was to visit with the families of top ten guards Tyus Jones and Rashad Vaughn on Wednesday in Minnesota, about the same time No. 43-rated point guard Jordan McLaughlin orally committed to USC.
McLaughin placed a hat of USC on his head during a ceremony in which he had the caps of USC, UCLA, KU and Indiana lined in front of him on a table.
“They’re an up-and-coming program, and I feel I have a great rapport with the staff already,” McLaughlin told ESPN.com. “In addition, they told me they would bring No. 11 (jersey of Bill Sharman) out of retirement so I could wear it during my Trojan career. That definitely was a nice finishing touch on the visit (last weekend).”
Meanwhile, Jones, a 6-1 senior from Apple Valley High who is ranked No. 5 nationally by Rivals.com, will visit KU on Oct. 18 with his good friend, No. 1-rated Jahlil Okafor, 6-11 from Chicago Whitney Young.
Jones and Okafor have already visited Baylor and will visit Duke together on Oct. 25. Jones is also considering Minnesota and Kentucky. Coaches from Duke, Minnesota and Kentucky visited with Jones on Monday and Tuesday.
No. 7-rated Vaughn, a 6-5 senior from Findlay Prep High in Henderson, Nev., has a list of KU, Minnesota, North Carolina, Arizona, Baylor, Georgetown, Iowa State, Kentucky, UCLA, UConn and UNLV. One of Vaughn’s coaches told the Ames Tribune he will visit ISU on Nov. 17, Baylor on Oct. 18 and North Carolina on Sept. 27. KU coach Self, who was to meet with Vaughn’s family members Wednesday in Vaughn’s hometown of Minneapolis, will travel to Las Vegas to visit with Vaughn on Friday.
Self today is scheduled to visit the family of No. 3-rated Stanley Johnson, 6-6 senior from Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif. He is considering KU, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Oregon, UCLA and USC with Kentucky and ‘Zona considered the leaders.
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More on Milt: Milt Newton, who on Tuesday was introduced as general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, became the third GM off KU’s 1988 national championship team. The others: San Antonio’s R.C. Buford, an assistant to Larry Brown at KU and Indiana’s Kevin Pritchard, a guard on the team.
“It was just something that was on my mind,” Newton told the Washington Post, referring to becoming a general manager. He was in the Wizards’ front office 10 years before moving to Minnesota. “My dad always told me that ‘you don’t have a job, you have a very well paid hobby,’ but it’s something that I love and it’s always good to do something that you love and that you can put your heart and soul into it.”