Just before it became the first Ivy League team to crack the top 10 of the ESPN recruiting ranking lists, the Harvard men’s basketball team signaled that it wasn’t satisfied. On Saturday, the No. 2 overall recruit in the Class of 2017, Wendell Carter Jr., announced that his first official visit will be going to Harvard in the fall.
Carter Jr., who has been ranked among the top 10 prospects for the Class of 2017 all year, listed Harvard alongside Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, and Kentucky as his choices last weekend at the Nike EYBL. He is the most prominent prospect to ever take an official visit to Cambridge; rumors of Mohamed Bamba—a similarly high-quality prospect in the Class of 2017—taking a visit to Harvard a couple weeks ago proved to be unsubstantiated, per sources close to the athletics department.
The prospect had previewed the move in early January, when he announced on his USA Today blog that he was “planning to visit Harvard … soon”. In that same post, Carter Jr. discussed a common theme surrounding his recruitment—his tie to Gary Trent Jr., a fellow five-star guard. The two have discussed their recruitment as a package deal, with Carter Jr. putting the chance that they play together at “maybe 75 percent”. Trent Jr. has not been tied yet to Harvard, however.
Carter Jr. also noted on Saturday that he and Trent will be visiting Kentucky for Big Blue Madness, the school’s midnight festival introducing its basketball team for the upcoming season.
Carter said that he wants to “just see what the atmosphere is like during big games, how the fans treat players, and them coming out and filling up in the gym” during his trip to Kentucky.—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.
