photo by: Journal-World Illustration

University of Kansas basketball recruiting

One of the top-ranked prep basketball players in the Class of 2019 has scheduled an official visit to Kansas for Late Night the weekend of Sept. 28.

And, according to his mother, James Wiseman’s trip to Lawrence is not just a formality.

Speaking with 247 Sports recruiting analyst Evan Daniels this week, Wiseman’s mother, Donzaleigh Artis, classified her son’s recruitment as “wide open.”

“It’s not just Kentucky and Memphis,” she added.

Those two programs have been considered by most as the likely landing spots for Wiseman, a 7-foot, 210-pound center from Memphis who played for current Memphis coach Penny Hardaway for one season at Memphis East High.

But Artis told Daniels that all eight schools on her son’s final list remain in the hunt, including KU.

“Kansas keeps in touch all the time,” Artist told Daniels. “Vanderbilt is always on him. Florida State is emailing and texting, they’re on him. … Right now, we’re just scheduling visits with different schools that we want to visit,” Artis said. “Everybody is to the point now where they want to say that James is going to Memphis.”

While that may happen in the future and certainly has happened, in an unofficial-visit capacity, in the past, the more immediate future includes trips elsewhere.

In addition to checking out KU for Late Night, Daniels reported that Wiseman will host the Kansas coaches for an in-home visit on Sept. 12.

Wiseman also plans to make official visits to Kentucky on Sept. 7 and Vanderbilt on Oct. 5 and also is eyeing an official visit with Florida State. That would leave one more official visit in his pocket and Artis said her son, at this time, was unsure which program would get visit No. 5.

Regardless of where that fifth and final visit takes him, those schools and coaches in the Wiseman sweepstakes will have to wait a while for a decision.

“We’re going to wait this out,” Artis told Daniels. “I want James to go through his entire 12th-grade year of being a 12th grader. You don’t ever get that back. You never get back being a kid. I want him to evaluate each school with what’s happening. I want him to figure it out because you have transfer students when basketball starts, you got people going to enter the (NBA) Draft, coaches going to change so we’re going to do this at a late period, the latest period you can, so he can see both sides of it.”