Coach Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks have been extremely active on the NCAA Basketball recruiting trail over the past few days.
Since the beginning of the week, Kansas Jayhawks‘ coach Bill Self wrapped up his 2019 NCAA Basketball recruiting class and doled out five scholarships to members of the class of 2020 and 2021. It all started on July 16 when the Jayhawks extended offers to 2021 four-star Kennedy Chandler (Memphis, TN) and 2020 three-star Kerwin Walton (Minnetonka, MN). Then on Wednesday, the Jayhawks made overtures to 2021 Javonte Brown-Ferguson (Pickering, Canada), 2021 four-star Zion Harmon (Bowling Green, KY) and 2021 four-star Kendall Brown (Cottage Grove, MN).
Chandler is a consensus top-40 prospect in 2021 who also picked up offers from Arizona, Syracuse, Memphis, and Oklahoma over the last week. The 6-1 point guard now holds an impressive 35 total offers. He is coming off a solid Peach Jam performance where the rising junior helped MoKan to win the championship by averaging 14.1 points and six assists.
Walton is a high-level shooter and defender who put on a terrific shooting performance at the Addidas Summer Championships over the weekend where he knocked down 15 triples on Saturday, connecting on10 treys in the morning session and five more five hours later. The 6-5 small forward was garnering the most interest from Baylor, Creighton, Kansas State, Minnesota, and Purdue. But now, Arizona, Cincinnati, Iowa, Iowa State, Miami, Vanderbilt, and West Virginia as well as KU has become involved. Walton is expected to see if any more schools join the fray and then cut down his list and take official visits this fall.
Brown had an impressive weekend at the UnderArmour championship and picked up a pair of offers from Providence and Texas A&M as a result. The 6-11 power forward now holds offers from Oklahoma, Tulane, Maryland, New Mexico, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and Ohio. He also has garnered interest from Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, UConn. Oregon, Indiana, Texas and Northwestern. Brown has strong fame and possesses good size and broad shoulders. The rising junior is a decent athlete who has a soft touch around the basket and maintains the physical tools to be a legitimate rim protector.
Harmon is a consensus top-55 player in the class. The 5-11 point guard is ranked among the top 30 players in his class by both ESPN and Rivals. 247Sports Composite has him at No. 31 while 247Sports put Harmon at No. 54. The Marshall County product also holds offers 10 offers including Auburn, LSU, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, SMU, Creighton, Saint Louis, and Stephen F. Austin.
Brown announced that he received an offer from the Jayhawks via his twitter account. The 6-7 wing is a consensus top-50 player in his class. He is ranked as high as No. 16 by Rivals and low as No. 45 by 247Sports. Brown is considering KU, Baylor, Iowa State, Nebraska, California, Maryland, Iowa, Minnesota, Creighton, and others.
Brown is versatile, has excellent size and strong ball-handling skills. He is also long and potential to be an elite defender. Brown, who will be attending Sunrise Academy in Kansas this year, wants to wait until after the last live period this summer before scheduling visits. However, he told Jacob Polacheck of ZAGSBLOG that “for sure” he wants to take visits to Kansas and Maryland.
July 17 was a really busy day for Self as he also completed his 2019 class with a commitment from top-150 Dajuan Harris.
What Dajuan Harris brings to KU
Harris committed to Self and the Jayhawks on Tuesday night. The 6-1, 170-pound combo guard, who reclassified from 2020, is rated as a four-star prospect by 247Sports and 247Sports Composite as he is ranked 97 and 101 by those two services, respectively. Rivals has him as a three-star prospect and No. 136 overall. Harris originally signed with Missouri State but asked out of the commitment in May.
The Columbia (Mo.) native is very mature, athletic, and a staunch defender with fantastic hands. Harris is a floor general who is a strong ball-handler and solid distributor.
Harris helped Rock Ridge High School to a state title this past season. More recently, he was fantastic in a Peach Jam matchup against Sharife Cooper this past week, filling up the box sheet with13 points, 10 assists, nine rebounds, three steals, two blocks along with taking three charges.
Harris joins four-star wing Christian Braun, four-star wing Tristan Enaruna, four-star point guard Isaac McBride, and four-star small Jalen Wilson as well as grad transfer Isaiah Moss — all of whom have enrolled in school on Wednesday — in the Jayhawks class.
However, according to Gary Bedore of The Kansas City Star, may not qualify and will have to once again be part of the 2020 class.
“He’s in the midst of academic work now, online and tutoring,” LisaSandbothe-Braun, who Harris has lived with during the summer since the seventh grade, said. “The plan is for Harris to be red-shirted his freshman year with the perimeter position loaded at KU. His academic status should be known by mid-August.”
“It’ll be a good year for him getting the feeling of the school, his responsibilities, his routine. Any freshman coming in … somebody not academically used to it so much it’d be a good year for him to make that transition, get his routine down, focus on that, get the first year under his belt with nutrition and weights,” Sandbothe-Braun added.
KU’s recruiting class is ranked 15th nationally by 247Sports and 14th by 247Sports.