Kansas University basketball recruiting

The news that most people following college basketball recruiting expected became official on Monday night.

That’s when Class of 2018 prospect Marvin Bagley III announced on ESPN’s SportsCenter that he would reclassify into the 2017 class and attend Duke University during the 2017-18 school year.

Bagley, a 6-foot-11, 220-pound forward from California, chose Duke over finalists UCLA and USC, which made up his final three after that trio, along with Kansas, Kentucky and Arizona, had cracked his Top 6.

Bagley never visited KU and said on SportsCenter that he chose Duke because of the feeling he had while on campus.

“The brotherhood there, man,” Bagley said live on the popular highlight show. “That’s what Coach K preached to me and my family and I had a good feeling when I was there.”

The addition of Bagley instantly moves Duke’s 2017 recruiting class to the top of the rankings and also positions the Blue Devils as the preseason favorite heading into the 2017-18 season.

Kansas, meanwhile, continues to focus its efforts on 7-foot McDonald’s All-American Mitchell Robinson, who visited campus over the weekend but has been pretty quiet about how his visit went since Tweeting last Friday night, “Kansas is nice.”

The Jayhawks have one scholarship available to give for the 2017-18 season, and even if it winds up going to Robinson, the standout center still would need to be cleared by the NCAA to play immediately since he spent the summer on the campus of Western Kentucky, where he initially signed but asked out of his commitment after his godfather left the WKU coaching staff in July.