The country’s No. 15-ranked basketball player in the Class of 2012 shocked the recruiting world Sunday by orally committing to the University of Houston.

Danuel House, a 6-foot-7, 195-pound senior forward from Hightower High in Missouri City, Texas, chose coach James Dickey’s Cougars over finalists Kansas, Texas, Baylor, Ohio State and Georgetown.

His hometown is located just 15 miles from Houston.

“He (Dickey) made me feel like I was wanted and I was loved,” House told the Fort Bend Sun newspaper. “He told me I could start a new tradition by taking my own leap of faith.”

House made the announcement on the same day as Rivals.com’s No. 47-rated Chicken Knowles, a 6-9 forward from HYCA in Houston, who chose UH over Arkansas, Baylor and Missouri.

House had a huge summer on the AAU circuit. ESPN.com says his “defining moment” came on July 26 when he scored 25 points in leading Texas Pro to a victory over the Georgia Stars at the AAU Super Showcase tournament in Florida.

“One of the aspects that makes House so special is he can play in an up-and-down tempo or execute in the half court,” wrote Paul Biancardi of ESPN.com. “He is a machine in the transition game with his athletic ability, length and body control. He reads his defender and the defense and then attacks, which displays his basketball IQ. He is a big-time scorer who knocks down deep threes, cuts off of screens to score mid-range jumpers and has excellent body control to finish at the rim. He is as skilled of a player as you will find at his size.”

Self visits Arkansas prep

KU coach Bill Self had an in-home visit Sunday with Archie Goodwin, a 6-4 senior forward from Sylvan Hills High in Little Rock, Ark. Goodwin, who is ranked No. 12 nationally by Rivals.com, has a final list of KU, Arkansas, UConn, Kentucky and Memphis.

Goodwin — he will visit KU for the Sept. 24 Legends of the Phog alumni game — recently was in the news after listing some reasons schools did not make his final five.

He did so in a blog at Sync Magazine.

Of Baylor, Goodwin wrote: “Coach Scott Drew is a great guy. I love coach Drew. They were one of the first schools that were recruiting me. But I didn’t like that they were an adidas team, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t go to Kansas because Kansas is a great team. I can look over the adidas thing – I own some adidas stuff. I didn’t like their colors, either. I don’t like green and gold. That’s ugly …. When you got ugly colors like that, you gotta be Nike. Baylor has some ugly shoes, too. On top of that, the one assistant coach I did really know – coach Morefield, he moved on to doing something in the NBA so once they lost him I didn’t feel too comfortable with any other assistants on their team.”

Some national outlets picked up on Goodwin’s comments, leading some pundits and fans to criticize him.

Evin Demirel of Sync Magazine has stood up for Goodwin, basically telling the world to lighten up after reading the outgoing high school senior’s comments.

“Most of the people making these nasty attacks seem to believe the only reason Goodwin chose to eliminate Baylor from contention was aesthetic concerns. This is obviously false, since he gave other reasons,” Demirel wrote. “It’s unfortunate that his comments were stripped from their original context on this blog, but I also understand that is an inherent risk with anything written online for public consumption. … People who take the time to read these diaries, or listen to other Goodwin interviews online, will quickly realize he’s a personable, intelligent teenager. But he’s a teenager. In the spring, he was watching “SpongeBob” and “Fairly Odd Parents.” He likes to goof around. And yeah, he likes some colors and shoe styles over others. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, even those spewing ill-informed garbage all over major outlets’ comment sections. It’s a lot easier, after all, to form opinions without first going through the trouble of getting correct context and proper background information. But it takes curiosity and intelligence to even understand when such effort is necessary,” Demirel wrote.

Goodwin also defended himself on Twitter, writing: “Can everyone please stop saying I dropped Baylor because of their colors. That is no where near true. If you believe that you don’t know Anything about basketball recruiting. … Some dude told me I was gone be dead by the time I’m 30 with my attitude because of what I said about the colors. What type of stuff is that … People who know the real Archie Goodwin know not to believe everything they read,” Goodwin tweeted.