Kansas coaches, Bill Self and Kurtis Townsend, made the trip to Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday to conduct an in-home visit with the #23 ranked player in the ESPNU 100, Adreian Payne. According to Payne’s high school coach, Art Winston, the visit was a success for the Kansas staff. During the meeting the coaches were able to schedule an official visit to Lawrence for Payne, but as TheShiver.com first reported yesterday morning, that visit, originally set for October 23rd, will have to be rescheduled. TheShiver.com caught up to Coach Winston to talk about the visit and when Payne might make the trip to Lawrence.
“It went great,” Winston said of the visit. “Coach Self and Coach Townsend were here to do the visit. It was a great visit, and Coach Self is a very personable person. He is funny at times, and serious at time. You know, you see these guys (coaches) on T.V. all the time, but you don’t really know what kind of person they are, but he’s a really good person. I like him,” Winston added about Self.
Adreian had the opportunity to learn about the Kansas program, something that Winston was already familiar with.
“Adreian learned about the program. He doesn’t really watch a lot of basketball,” Winston said. “I do watch a lot of basketball so I knew about Kansas already,” Winston added.
Some of the information that was given to Payne about the Jayhawks from videos the staff showed him and company.
“He did play a video about their National Championship, and talked about Coach Manning, who led them to a National Championship in 1988,” Winston said. “It was kind of interesting to him,” Winston added on the subject of Payne learning about the Kansas program.
Unfortunately, the visit to Lawrence that was originally set for October 23rd needs to be rescheduled. Once Winston and Payne had the opportunity to look at their calendars on Wednesday morning they realized that Adreian was booked for October 24th.
“We noticed this morning on the calendar that Adreian is taking his ACT on the 24th,” Winston said. “In fact, I have already talked to Coach Townsend about rescheduling the visit. We will likely reschedule then to a date later than that. We get started here (basketball practice) in the second week of November, so we will look at the first weekend of November, or maybe the weekend of October 31st,” added Winston.
Kansas was the last of the in-home visits for Payne and once the official visit to Kansas is finalized Payne will have scheduled all of the official visits he plans to make to the five schools remaining on his list. Those five schools are Michigan State, Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona and Kansas. Payne has already unofficially visited Kentucky, Michigan State, and West Virginia, who he will officially visit on the weekend of October 16th.
According to Winston, it is unknown as to when Payne will make his decision on where he will attend college, he may decide during the early period or wait until spring.
“He had mentioned earlier that he wanted to commit in the early period,” said Winston. “He wants to take all of his visits and then take some time to evaluate. His decision could come in November, or it might be April. He might commit early, but then not sign until April, I just don’t know,” Winston added on when Payne might decide.
