Grimes, Langford ready to roll at 2018 Jordan Brand Classic

By Matt Tait     Apr 7, 2018

Kansas University basketball recruiting

Kansas basketball target Romeo Langford will be in Brooklyn on Sunday, participating in another significant event that could bring him one step closer to making a decision about where he will play his college ball next season.

Langford, along with 23 other top players in the high school class of 2018, will be at Barclays Center for the 17th annual Jordan Brand Classic all-star game, playing for the Home Team, which also will feature KU signee Quentin Grimes. Tipoff is set for 4 p.m. on ESPN2.

Langford, the 6-foot-5, 190-pound shooting guard out of New Albany, Ind., who is ranked as the fifth best player in the entire 2018 class by 247 Sports, is one of just two players on either roster who remains undecided about his collegiate future.

The other is 6-9 forward Darius Bazley, who recently made headlines by backing out of his plan to play at Syracuse to make the jump to the NBA’s G League instead.

Langford, by all indications, is intent on playing college basketball next season and he said last month, at the McDonald’s All-American game that he would make a decision from his three finalists — Kansas, Indiana and Vanderbilt — sometime before the end of April, after the Jordan Brand and Nike Hoop Summit on April 13.

After a pre-Classic workout earlier this week, Langford told reporters that he would not take any more trips to his three finalists before making his announcement and added that he has already heard all he needed to hear from each of them and that he remained in contact with coaches from all three programs on a daily basis.

“I’m at the home stretch now,” Langford recently told SI.com’s Chris Johnson. “I just have to make a decision.”

Grimes, who signed with KU in November, after picking the Jayhawks over Kentucky, Marquette and Texas, has said since then that he has been in Langford’s ear constantly about his desire to have Langford join him and fellow-five-star guard Devon Dotson at KU next season.

With all four of KU’s top four perimeter players from the 2017-18 Final Four team leaving — Devonte’ Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk to graduation and Malik Newman and Lagerald Vick to early-draft entrees — KU coach Bill Self certainly has enough playing time to hand out to keep all three players happy.

Grimes and Dotson both know that, and, earlier this week, Grimes reiterated that he would love to see Langford join the roster.

“I feel like if he came, it would be crazy in the backcourt,” Grimes told Johnson.

Whether the Jayhawks land Langford or not, it seems certain that Kansas will look to add another player in the 2018 class to help fill out next year’s roster.

“We definitely have to get someone,” Self recently told the Journal-World. “I think we need another shooter for sure.”

Throughout the years, several future Jayhawks have delivered strong performances in the Jordan Brand Classic.

Cliff Alexander (2014) and Cheick Diallo (2015) brought home MVP honors and Diallo’s 26-point outburst still ranks as the fifth most points scored in a single game. Alexander scored 23 during his MVP performance.

Dating back to the showcase event’s debut in 2002, 13 other soon-to-be Jayhawks represented themselves and their future school at the Jordan Brand Classic. In order, they were:

Rodrick Stewart (2003), Sasha Kaun and Russell Robinson (2004), Julian Wright (2005), Sherron Collins (2006), Xavier Henry (2009), Josh Selby (2010), Joel Embiid, Wayne Selden and Andrew Wiggins (2013), Kelly Oubre (2014), Udoka Azubuike (2016) and Billy Preston (2017).

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.