According to his Twitter account, Class of 2020 Kansas basketball target Bryce Thompson is headed to training camp for the USA Basketball Junior National Team.
That fact is only going to add fuel to his fast-rising recruitment, which already includes KU and North Carolina and figures to reach the best of the best by the time it’s finished.
Thompson, a 5-star guard from Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa, Okla., recently made another unofficial visit to KU to meet with KU coach Bill Self, the rest of the Kansas coaching staff, see the facilities and get a feel for how the Jayhawks see him playing at the college level.
Ranked No. 18 overall by Rivals.com, the 6-foot-4, 180-pound guard who jumped more than 20 spots in the most recent Rivals rankings has been lauded for his vision, play-making ability and knack for scoring.
“Tremendous basketball IQ,” KUsports.com recruiting insider Matt Scott said of Thompson. “He really knows how to control the tempo and set up his teammates and he can completely control games that he only scores 6 points in because he’s so good at getting others involved and playing to his teammates’ strengths.”
Rivals recruiting analyst Shay Wildeboor recently caught up with Thompson’s father, Rod, to talk about the family’s recent visit to Kansas and more.
“The visit to Kansas went great,” Rod Thompson told Wildeboor. “It was really good. We were very eager to get back up to Kansas for this visit. One thing you look at, you know, is the players, so last time Bryce was on campus, he didn’t really get to interact with him like he did this time around. It was just good to get back up to Kansas and talk with Coach Self and interact with the coaching staff and players.”
Thompson’s father, you may recall, played for Self for one season at Tulsa back in the late 1990s.
“I’ve known Coach Self for a long time,” Rod Thompson told Wildeboor. “We were able to ask questions we had and stuff like that, which was great for us. Coach Self, you know, is a competitor and he wants the best players. Of course, we’ve always known, but Coach Self just reiterated how much he wants Bryce and he was sure to let us know how early he offered Bryce.
He continued: “Coach Self told Bryce that he wants to push him and make him work and that he’s a priority for them in the 2020 class. Coach Self has said all of those things before, but as it gets closer, and as Bryce continues to ascend and get better and improve, which I think is very attractive to a lot of guys, Coach Self just wanted to let Bryce know all of those things again.”
While Thompson’s immediate future includes the USA Basketball minicamp — July 25-28 in Colorado Springs, Colo. — his dad told Wildeboor that the family also would likely spend some time in the near future narrowing down his list to a more manageable group of finalists.
After taking official visits last fall to Arkansas, Colorado and Texas A&M, Thompson has a long list of schools that are interested in him including that trio, KU, Carolina, in-state programs Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, Houston, Iowa, Marquette, Notre Dame, Michigan State and a dozen more.
“We’ve been trying to get a lot of the visits out of the way,” Rod Thompson told Wildeboor. “We’re going to cut the list pretty soon so that we won’t have to take a bunch of time and try to take five official visits and all that kind of stuff. We want to go ahead and try to get a lot of that done right now. “We’ll cut the list, probably to five, after USA basketball.”
Happy 4th! Excited to announce that I’ve been selected to attend the USA Basketball Training Camp! @usabjnt #July4th #AllHoopNoHype pic.twitter.com/0vJp0sFoNJ
— Bryce Thompson???? (@B3thompson__) July 5, 2019
