Louisville basketball: Chris Mack close to securing important official visit

Louisville basketball is looking to keep the ball rolling in their recruiting class by getting a new top-60 player on campus for an official visit.

There aren’t many available options left for Chris Mack and the Louisville basketball staff within the top 75 of the 2020 recruiting class rankings, which makes their newest target the most important remaining on their recruiting list.

After losing out on several star point guards in the 2020 class, Chris Mack has had to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate his team’s plans for recruiting at the position. Luckily for him and his staff, a former top-60 target became available again last week when four-star guard Jalen Terry de-committed from Michigan State and began talking to new schools.

One of the programs that reached out to Terry right away was Louisville, getting re-acquainted with the nation’s 56th best player and 10th best point guard according to 247 Sports. As I wrote last week after Terry de-committed from Tom Izzo’s program, Louisville had a pre-existing relationship before his original commitment, offering the four-star guard a scholarship after an unofficial visit in 2018.

Ultimately Terry and Louisville ended up going separate ways, as Louisville focused on other high-ranked options and Terry decided to commit to Michigan State.

Now things between the two are heating up as Louisville obviously has a big need for a primary ball-handler while Terry is getting back into the recruiting cycle late and will look to collect as much information about his perspective options as quick as possible.

Writing for 247 Sports, recruiting expert Evan Daniels wrote that Terry has primarily been talking with four schools including Louisville, DePaul, Oregon, and LSU. Daniels confirmed that Terry had already scheduled an official visit with LSU but also mentioned that Terry is quickly trying to get a visit to Louisville. He wrote:

"The trip (to LSU) will begin on Friday. Terry is also working to finalize an official visit date to Louisville, a separate source said."

We saw this past weekend how important getting recruits to campus can be as Louisville picked up a pledge from another de-commit in D’Andre Davis, who was previously pledged to play for Fred Hoiberg at Nebraska. After backing off that decision, Davis re-open his recruitment and much like Terry, Louisville quickly reached out, explained their need for a wing, and gained a commitment in a matter of days (you can read more about D’Andre Davis and how he compares to Dwayne Sutton here).

Getting Terry on campus could be the same way. We know that Louisville will need to bring in another dynamic point guard to joining Darius Perry and David Johnson in 2019-2020 and Terry would be a great addition this late.

Though he’s a bit undersized compared to what we know Mack likes, Terry is a dynamic athlete who makes up for his size with quickness and a high basketball IQ. He’s shown that he can be a scorer as well as a playmaker as he averaged nearly 18 points, 6 assists, and 5 rebounds per game during his 18 game stint on the Nike EYBL circuit.

Louisville will face some stiff competition but getting Terry on campus could lead to the third commitment in the class for Chris Mack and his staff. After missing out on multiple top 30 players, landing a player like Terry to go along with Jay Scrubb and D’Andre Davis would put Louisville right back on track in the class of 2020.