According to Adam Zagoria, Amile Jefferson will visit Kentucky next weekend, meaning that he will likely miss Villanova's "Hoops Mania" spectacle that has become one of the major recruiting events for Jay Wright and his staff. Jefferson hopes to make his college decision before basketball season starts on November 13th, but his coach told Zagsblog that his decision may ultimately come after the early signing period.
So far, Jefferson has visited NC State, Villanova, Temple and Maryland unofficially, has taken an official visit to Ohio State last weekend and is slated for an official visit to Kentucky next weekend.
His high school coach claims that he is taking official visits to schools that are further away from home and may rely on unofficial visits for the schools that are in the area. Presumably, this is because travel to official visits is paid for by the schools.
So what about Villanova? Are the 'Cats still in the mix? According to his coach Jason Polykoff:
"Yeah, I think Villanova will still be in the mix," he said. "What other schools I don’t know….He does like ‘Nova. It doesn’t matter to him that it’s local. It has more to do with the school itself and the program."
Jefferson still maintains a long list of schools he is interested in, almost a dozen of them. This late in the game, that makes the talented big man one of the nation's biggest recruiting wildcards.
Update (10/13): Zagoria now writes that Jefferson will also visit UConn this weekend and will be joined by 2013 'Nova targets, Kuran Iverson and Austin Colbert.