R.J. Barrett cuts list to five schools

Five-star Class of 2018 phenom forward R.J. Barrett has narrowed the list of schools he's considering down to five.

College basketball's two recruiting powerhouses are still in the mix, along with three other very visible programs.

Barrett's list of five finalists includes Arizona, Duke, Michigan, Oregon and Kentucky in no particular order.

The 6-foot-7, 200-pound forward from Montverde Academy in Florida is the No. 1 ranked player from the Class of 2018.

He's been on Kentucky's radar for some time. At the end of last month Barrett wrote about his decision to reclassify to the 2018 class, from the 2019 class, in a blog post at USA TODAY.

"On my recruitment, I will say that the schools that are showing the most interest are Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and UCLA," he wrote in that post. "A few more have reached out and those schools are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, USC, UConn and UNLV."

So while not all of those schools made Barrett's cut, there aren't any major surprises in terms of the programs still in play.

John Calipari is very familiar with Barrett, as the five-star prospect led Canada to a 99-87 victory over his USA U19 team in the FIBA U19 World Cup in Cairo, Egypt earlier this summer. Barrett had 38 points (12-24 FG), 13 rebounds and five assists in that spectacular performance.

Barrett's Canada squad went on to defeat Italy in the finals for the gold.