Former Free State High standout Brady Morningstar, a 6-foot-3, 165-pound shooting guard, will play his basketball at Kansas University next season.

Morningstar, who is spending this year at New Hampton School in New Hampton, N.H., committed to KU over the weekend after a visit from the KU coaching staff during the current opening recruiting period.

Morningstar chose his father Roger’s alma mater over Tennessee, West Virginia, Northern Illinois and others.

Sources close to the KU program fully anticipate Morningstar will be on scholarship for the 2006-07 season.

Kansas’ coaches cannot comment on recruits in accordance with NCAA rules.

“I’m going to Kansas,” Morningstar told recruiting analyst Eric Bossi of Scout.com on Sunday night. “It’s been my dream forever. I was not about to let the opportunity slip away. Coach (Bill) Self said he can’t wait for me to come out there (to play). He wanted to make sure this is what I really wanted to do.

“They came down here to see me at New Hampton. We talked in the coaches office a couple of hours. I gave them a tour of campus. It was pretty much known I’d commit.”

Morningstar, who averaged 19 points and five rebounds en route to being named Sunflower League player of the year his senior year at Free State, spent the summer working out and playing pickup games with members of the current KU team. He had a great summer and even received scholarship offers from NCAA Div. I schools who hoped he’d renege on his decision to attend New Hampton.

Morningstar’s father, Roger, said his son made a commitment he refused to break and that the year at New Hampton Prep would help him develop physically.

“When you are 166 pounds, you’ve got a dogfight on your hands,” Roger Morningstar has said. “Everybody puts on 15, 20 pounds their freshman year. You come back at 180, 185, it’s a little different deal.”

The younger Morningstar considered attending a junior college, but the family decided prep school made more sense.

“You go to a junior college, and your clock starts ticking,” Roger Morningstar said. “You go to a big four-year school and red shirt, and your clock starts ticking.

“Go to a prep school, and your clock doesn’t tick. They have great coaches and programs. You play 35 games, then you revisit everything in a year.”

The elder Morningstar knows of what he speaks.

A former star on a Jayhawk Final Four team (1974), Roger, at 6-6, averaged 11.7 points and 4.8 rebounds in his two seasons at KU after prepping in junior college.