Top prep prospect Marvin Bagley III makes it official, picks Duke

By Matt Tait     Aug 14, 2017

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Kansas University basketball recruiting

The news that most people following college basketball recruiting expected became official on Monday night.

That’s when Class of 2018 prospect Marvin Bagley III announced on ESPN’s SportsCenter that he would reclassify into the 2017 class and attend Duke University during the 2017-18 school year.

Bagley, a 6-foot-11, 220-pound forward from California, chose Duke over finalists UCLA and USC, which made up his final three after that trio, along with Kansas, Kentucky and Arizona, had cracked his Top 6.

Bagley never visited KU and said on SportsCenter that he chose Duke because of the feeling he had while on campus.

“The brotherhood there, man,” Bagley said live on the popular highlight show. “That’s what Coach K preached to me and my family and I had a good feeling when I was there.”

The addition of Bagley instantly moves Duke’s 2017 recruiting class to the top of the rankings and also positions the Blue Devils as the preseason favorite heading into the 2017-18 season.

Kansas, meanwhile, continues to focus its efforts on 7-foot McDonald’s All-American Mitchell Robinson, who visited campus over the weekend but has been pretty quiet about how his visit went since Tweeting last Friday night, “Kansas is nice.”

The Jayhawks have one scholarship available to give for the 2017-18 season, and even if it winds up going to Robinson, the standout center still would need to be cleared by the NCAA to play immediately since he spent the summer on the campus of Western Kentucky, where he initially signed but asked out of his commitment after his godfather left the WKU coaching staff in July.

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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.