DJ Wagner sets commitment date
Camden (N.J.) High five-star recruit DJ Wagner will announce his college decision on Monday, November 14th at 3:00pm ET.
Wagner, a 6-foot-3 class of 2023 combo guard, is expected to choose between Kentucky and Louisville.
Earlier this month, he visited Kentucky for Big Blue Madness and also tripped to Lexington officially last year. He has not visited Louisville.
Wagner is the No. 6 overall prospect in the 2023 class, according to the On3 Consensus, the average ranking from all four major recruiting media companies.
Wagner talks Kentucky, Louisville
In a previous interview with On3, Wagner discussed both the ‘Cards and the ‘Cats.
Louisville: “They are a great school. Coach Kenny Payne is a great coach. It’s a great school, a great university.”
Kentucky: “Same thing. Coach Cal is a great coach and that’s a great university. They’ve had some great teams come through there.”
Kentucky trending for Wagner
According to the Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM), Kentucky has a 99.0% chance of landing Wagner. The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create RPM, the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. It factors in machine learning, social sentiment, visits and historical trends. However, expert predictions are still a big piece of the RPM equation.
It comes at very little surprise, considering a handful of factors. Kentucky has been the one consistent school to recruit Wagner. Head coach John Calipari coached DJ’s father, Dajuan Wagner Sr., for one year at Memphis in the early 2000s. Despite Louisville hiring DJ’s grandfather, Milton Wagner, he never took a visit to the ‘Cards. Finally, Kentucky just landed a commitment from DJ’s summer ball and high school teammate, Aaron Bradshaw.
Scouting Summary
Wagner has been a big name since middle school. With that reputation also comes lofty expectations. What pops off the page immediately with Wagner is his competitiveness. His motor is always running hot, on both ends of the floor. Defensively, he wants the opposing team’s best player, and he picks them up full court. Offensively, Wagner plays a fearless game. He lacks top-end burst and his average length and size can make things tough for him at the rim, but he keeps coming. Wagner has seen every junk defense a team can throw at him, and he adjusts accordingly. The jump shot can get streaky, but he is a volume scorer. He has better court vision that he is given credit for. Is young for his grade and his competitive fire runs hot. – On3’s Jamie Shaw