Piecing together the Edrice Adebayo recruitment begins with the simple thought of: Who can get me to the NBA fastest and most prepared?
Adebayo had been star struck about the Kentucky NBA pipeline. It wasn’t that he had anything critical about NC State, but the Wildcats are churning out pro-after-pro, and that has long gotten his attention for multiple years. He just needed Kentucky to recruit him, because for the longest time they weren’t. We’ve seen numerous prep players politic for a Kentucky offer, but sometimes that is just for the “status symbol” involved with that, but Adebayo really wanted to look at Kentucky.
So the recruitment started off as being a NC State vs. North Carolina battle, with the Tar Heels winning his freshman and sophomore years of high school, but the Wolfpack edging out UNC during his junior year.
Then from the start of April, the race became NC State vs. Kentucky with the asterisk of will the Wildcats offer. Both programs did what they needed to do to wrap up Adebayo, with NCSU doing it in a more loud style, and UK in its typical behind the scenes work.
We’ll start with the NC State side of things. The Wolfpack started recruiting Adebayo in the eighth grade to a certain point, but like a lot of things in recruiting, it doesn’t really get going until the head coach watches a player. NC State coach Mark Gottfried and assistant coach Rob Moxley famously took the helicopter out for the first time Dec. 13, 2013, to watch Pinetown (N.C.) Northside play Chocowinity (N.C.) Southside. Adebayo was awesome in that game, and he officially graduated from being a name often talked about on The State of Basketball message board, to full-blown complete priority.
At the time, UNC was the “perceived” leader. Coach Roy Williams had been out to see Adebayo already, and Adebayo and his mother had been making the trip to Chapel Hill a few times already. Plus, Adebayo grew up a UNC fan. The NCAA sanctions proved too difficult for the Tar Heels to remain in the fight.
NC State went to work on Adebayo’s small inner circle, and the first tangible big move happened last March when he switched from Nike and Boo Williams to adidas and Team Loaded NC as his “primary” traveling team (more on that in a bit). He was going to play with eventual Wolfpack signee Dennis Smith Jr., and be coached by Dennis Smith Sr. Adebayo’s mentor Eric Peartree also became part of the staff.
By July, coaches didn’t even seem to be bothering recruiting Smith and Adebayo, which The Wolfpacker saw first-hand at a Big Shots event in Richmond, Va., and was informed upon concerning another Big Shots event in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Adebayo had always had rumors about transferring high schools, and the talk was both he and Smith would be on the move. Smith injured his knee in early August at adidas Nations in the Los Angeles area, and the transfer rumors died down a bit. Adebayo still went through with it and switched schools to High Point Christian, which then left Nike after four years with the swoosh to have adidas sponsor the hoops team. As we said at the time of the transfer, NC State had nothing to do with the choice of High Point Christian.
That is when all the recruiting industry decided that Adebayo was a certified lock to NC State. Starting in August, the weekly question of “When will Adebayo commit?” started to occur. The problem with all that was Adebayo himself never once said NC State was his leader. He’s relatively quiet, was insulated from the media and some colleges, and never really had a full handle on what schools were recruiting him or not. The subtle things like pairing down a list and setting up visits, which never happened until October. The bigger drama seemed to be was whether Adebayo would even sign during the fall period.
What also wasn’t happening was Adebayo didn’t get to spend much time at NC State this fall. NCSU had the weird football schedule of having six road games out of eight this fall, and Adebayo didn’t have Peartree to drive him to Raleigh. Outside of his official visit on Halloween, there wasn’t much time spent at NC State this fall.
NC State always felt good about things, but they didn’t have quite the same confidence that nearly every recruiting guru had. Rumors popped up that he was going to pick NC State after Smith had Sept. 10. Then it became when he officially visited NC State. Then people started making excuses on why he hadn’t picked the Wolfpack. There was the false “he would have picked a school, but Harry Giles was deciding that day” narrative that got discussed.
The problem with all those various rumors is that Adebayo hadn’t had the final meeting with his mother. Why? He was now 3-hours plus away from her. Going into Saturday night, High Point Christian coach Brandon Clifford had no feel on the timeline and that matched what was coming out of Raleigh. It seemed to be truly 50/50 on whether he’d wait until the spring or not.
The meeting with his mother finally happened last Sunday nights, and hence the leaks came out Monday morning, and by Monday afternoon, it became clear it had become Kentucky. The Wildcats then set him up with the Mike & Mike ESPN radio show to announce Tuesday. Some have wanted to put the “handler/future NBA agent” tag on Peartree and falsely thought he was the deciding factor. If that was the case, NC State would be happy right now. He definitely was in NC State’s corner and has been a pivotal person in Adebayo’s life, but it wasn’t his opinion that mattered in the end. This wasn’t what often gets dubbed a “do what is told” recruitment.
It’s hard to pin-point anything NC State could have done better with Adebayo, other than convincing him that he could achieve his NBA dreams in his home state. The adidas factor with Team Loaded NC and High Point Christian didn’t lock him up either, nor did playing with Smith. Most often, package deals don’t happen between high school or traveling team teammates due to players being burned out with being around each other so much prior to arriving in college. Smith and Adebayo never had that vibe.
Now, there is the Kentucky side of things. We don’t cover Kentucky and we won’t swear by every detail, but we do know some good sources connected to the Wildcats. Essentially, it’s second- or third-hand info.
We had mentioned when we did a summary of Shaun Kirk’s signing with NC State, that the Wolfpack won for a variety of reasons over the Wildcats because they knew every key piece around Kirk. We wrote that if Kentucky ever wanted to recruit Smith or Adebayo, they quickly learned that NC State is tough to beat with Team Loaded players (past/current players include Tyler Lewis, Cody Martin, Caleb Martin, Torin Dorn, Dennis Smith).
It turns out that the Kirk recruitment is exactly when Kentucky started to gear up for Smith and Adebayo. When Kentucky would want to talk about Kirk, the movers and shakers would inevitable change things to “how come UK hasn’t offered Smith and Adebayo.”
Kentucky was a quick study and what they found out last April was that recruiting Smith didn’t make much sense for them. He was in too deep with NC State and adidas and the Wildcats had basically declared to the world they wanted Giles and Katy (Texas) Cypress Lakes senior point guard De’Aaron Fox.
It was also around April when Kentucky started to get teased in college basketball circles for having Duke pass them by in the one-and-done era. Kentucky was sitting on May 1 without a great class of 2015, and the class of 2016 was getting slanted toward the Blue Devils again. That is when Kentucky went to work.
Kentucky salvaged things by landing reclassed Canadian point guard Jamal Murray on June 24, and reclassed Australian center Isaac Humphries on Aug. 20 to be freshmen this season. Chapel Hill, N.C., native Sacha Killeya-Jones switched from Virginia to Kentucky, and made it official the day before Humphries.
They had formerly offered Adebayo on July 25, but by August had complete confidence they were the leader. What they learned in April was that unlike Smith, Adebayo wasn’t intertwined to anything. He played for five traveling teams from July 2014-to-July 15, switched high schools and always harbored the dream of being the next NBA draft pick out of Kentucky. The Wildcats knew they could make a move there and struck hard and fast.
Now, Kentucky knew Adebayo’s mom really liked Gottfried and NC State. She wasn’t a college basketball fan/expert or anything like that, but Gottfried and before that Roy Williams, made quality impressions on her. In the end, she let Adebayo do what he wanted. We have said in the past that it’s always important for schools to have allies in the room when it’s go time. For instance, when Amile Jefferson picked Duke over NC State, the adults in the room wanted Duke’s education, and that is what won out.
Apparently, the official visit to Kentucky (he never unofficially visited UK) wasn’t even perfect for Adebayo. He couldn’t watch practice because that was the NBA Combine weekend the Wildcats hold, and NCAA rules prohibited Adebayo from watching practice. However, UK basically said: “Can you smell the money in the room? This is where you help yourself get drafted.” To someone who never hid from the start that he wanted to make the league, that music to his ears.
It also didn’t help NC State that Giles didn’t have a great official visit to Kentucky either, and that made it easier for him to pick Duke over UK.
Lastly, Adebayo gave kind of a hint a month ago to at least a few individuals. One source said a video company was working on his mix tape and wanted to put the Raleigh downtown skyline as part of the package. He politely told them to take it out.
Adebayo had been star struck about the Kentucky NBA pipeline. It wasn’t that he had anything critical about NC State, but the Wildcats are churning out pro-after-pro, and that has long gotten his attention for multiple years. He just needed Kentucky to recruit him, because for the longest time they weren’t. We’ve seen numerous prep players politic for a Kentucky offer, but sometimes that is just for the “status symbol” involved with that, but Adebayo really wanted to look at Kentucky.
So the recruitment started off as being a NC State vs. North Carolina battle, with the Tar Heels winning his freshman and sophomore years of high school, but the Wolfpack edging out UNC during his junior year.
Then from the start of April, the race became NC State vs. Kentucky with the asterisk of will the Wildcats offer. Both programs did what they needed to do to wrap up Adebayo, with NCSU doing it in a more loud style, and UK in its typical behind the scenes work.
We’ll start with the NC State side of things. The Wolfpack started recruiting Adebayo in the eighth grade to a certain point, but like a lot of things in recruiting, it doesn’t really get going until the head coach watches a player. NC State coach Mark Gottfried and assistant coach Rob Moxley famously took the helicopter out for the first time Dec. 13, 2013, to watch Pinetown (N.C.) Northside play Chocowinity (N.C.) Southside. Adebayo was awesome in that game, and he officially graduated from being a name often talked about on The State of Basketball message board, to full-blown complete priority.
At the time, UNC was the “perceived” leader. Coach Roy Williams had been out to see Adebayo already, and Adebayo and his mother had been making the trip to Chapel Hill a few times already. Plus, Adebayo grew up a UNC fan. The NCAA sanctions proved too difficult for the Tar Heels to remain in the fight.
NC State went to work on Adebayo’s small inner circle, and the first tangible big move happened last March when he switched from Nike and Boo Williams to adidas and Team Loaded NC as his “primary” traveling team (more on that in a bit). He was going to play with eventual Wolfpack signee Dennis Smith Jr., and be coached by Dennis Smith Sr. Adebayo’s mentor Eric Peartree also became part of the staff.
By July, coaches didn’t even seem to be bothering recruiting Smith and Adebayo, which The Wolfpacker saw first-hand at a Big Shots event in Richmond, Va., and was informed upon concerning another Big Shots event in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Adebayo had always had rumors about transferring high schools, and the talk was both he and Smith would be on the move. Smith injured his knee in early August at adidas Nations in the Los Angeles area, and the transfer rumors died down a bit. Adebayo still went through with it and switched schools to High Point Christian, which then left Nike after four years with the swoosh to have adidas sponsor the hoops team. As we said at the time of the transfer, NC State had nothing to do with the choice of High Point Christian.
That is when all the recruiting industry decided that Adebayo was a certified lock to NC State. Starting in August, the weekly question of “When will Adebayo commit?” started to occur. The problem with all that was Adebayo himself never once said NC State was his leader. He’s relatively quiet, was insulated from the media and some colleges, and never really had a full handle on what schools were recruiting him or not. The subtle things like pairing down a list and setting up visits, which never happened until October. The bigger drama seemed to be was whether Adebayo would even sign during the fall period.
What also wasn’t happening was Adebayo didn’t get to spend much time at NC State this fall. NCSU had the weird football schedule of having six road games out of eight this fall, and Adebayo didn’t have Peartree to drive him to Raleigh. Outside of his official visit on Halloween, there wasn’t much time spent at NC State this fall.
NC State always felt good about things, but they didn’t have quite the same confidence that nearly every recruiting guru had. Rumors popped up that he was going to pick NC State after Smith had Sept. 10. Then it became when he officially visited NC State. Then people started making excuses on why he hadn’t picked the Wolfpack. There was the false “he would have picked a school, but Harry Giles was deciding that day” narrative that got discussed.
The problem with all those various rumors is that Adebayo hadn’t had the final meeting with his mother. Why? He was now 3-hours plus away from her. Going into Saturday night, High Point Christian coach Brandon Clifford had no feel on the timeline and that matched what was coming out of Raleigh. It seemed to be truly 50/50 on whether he’d wait until the spring or not.
The meeting with his mother finally happened last Sunday nights, and hence the leaks came out Monday morning, and by Monday afternoon, it became clear it had become Kentucky. The Wildcats then set him up with the Mike & Mike ESPN radio show to announce Tuesday. Some have wanted to put the “handler/future NBA agent” tag on Peartree and falsely thought he was the deciding factor. If that was the case, NC State would be happy right now. He definitely was in NC State’s corner and has been a pivotal person in Adebayo’s life, but it wasn’t his opinion that mattered in the end. This wasn’t what often gets dubbed a “do what is told” recruitment.
It’s hard to pin-point anything NC State could have done better with Adebayo, other than convincing him that he could achieve his NBA dreams in his home state. The adidas factor with Team Loaded NC and High Point Christian didn’t lock him up either, nor did playing with Smith. Most often, package deals don’t happen between high school or traveling team teammates due to players being burned out with being around each other so much prior to arriving in college. Smith and Adebayo never had that vibe.
Now, there is the Kentucky side of things. We don’t cover Kentucky and we won’t swear by every detail, but we do know some good sources connected to the Wildcats. Essentially, it’s second- or third-hand info.
We had mentioned when we did a summary of Shaun Kirk’s signing with NC State, that the Wolfpack won for a variety of reasons over the Wildcats because they knew every key piece around Kirk. We wrote that if Kentucky ever wanted to recruit Smith or Adebayo, they quickly learned that NC State is tough to beat with Team Loaded players (past/current players include Tyler Lewis, Cody Martin, Caleb Martin, Torin Dorn, Dennis Smith).
It turns out that the Kirk recruitment is exactly when Kentucky started to gear up for Smith and Adebayo. When Kentucky would want to talk about Kirk, the movers and shakers would inevitable change things to “how come UK hasn’t offered Smith and Adebayo.”
Kentucky was a quick study and what they found out last April was that recruiting Smith didn’t make much sense for them. He was in too deep with NC State and adidas and the Wildcats had basically declared to the world they wanted Giles and Katy (Texas) Cypress Lakes senior point guard De’Aaron Fox.
It was also around April when Kentucky started to get teased in college basketball circles for having Duke pass them by in the one-and-done era. Kentucky was sitting on May 1 without a great class of 2015, and the class of 2016 was getting slanted toward the Blue Devils again. That is when Kentucky went to work.
Kentucky salvaged things by landing reclassed Canadian point guard Jamal Murray on June 24, and reclassed Australian center Isaac Humphries on Aug. 20 to be freshmen this season. Chapel Hill, N.C., native Sacha Killeya-Jones switched from Virginia to Kentucky, and made it official the day before Humphries.
They had formerly offered Adebayo on July 25, but by August had complete confidence they were the leader. What they learned in April was that unlike Smith, Adebayo wasn’t intertwined to anything. He played for five traveling teams from July 2014-to-July 15, switched high schools and always harbored the dream of being the next NBA draft pick out of Kentucky. The Wildcats knew they could make a move there and struck hard and fast.
Now, Kentucky knew Adebayo’s mom really liked Gottfried and NC State. She wasn’t a college basketball fan/expert or anything like that, but Gottfried and before that Roy Williams, made quality impressions on her. In the end, she let Adebayo do what he wanted. We have said in the past that it’s always important for schools to have allies in the room when it’s go time. For instance, when Amile Jefferson picked Duke over NC State, the adults in the room wanted Duke’s education, and that is what won out.
Apparently, the official visit to Kentucky (he never unofficially visited UK) wasn’t even perfect for Adebayo. He couldn’t watch practice because that was the NBA Combine weekend the Wildcats hold, and NCAA rules prohibited Adebayo from watching practice. However, UK basically said: “Can you smell the money in the room? This is where you help yourself get drafted.” To someone who never hid from the start that he wanted to make the league, that music to his ears.
It also didn’t help NC State that Giles didn’t have a great official visit to Kentucky either, and that made it easier for him to pick Duke over UK.
Lastly, Adebayo gave kind of a hint a month ago to at least a few individuals. One source said a video company was working on his mix tape and wanted to put the Raleigh downtown skyline as part of the package. He politely told them to take it out.
