INTEL: Ranking the contenders for 5-star Xavier Booker
Xavier Booker started the high school season barely ranked in the top 75. The 6-foot-10 center is currently a 2023 On3 Consensus five-star; what a difference a year makes.
Booker helped lead his Indianapolis (IN) Cathedral High to a state championship this year. He then played on the independent circuit with his G3 All Indy travel ball program, where things really blew up for him.
Since mid-March, Booker has added a dozen offers, taking his recruitment to a new level. However, at the end of the day, Booker will choose a program that was in with him before the blow-up occurred.
1. Michigan State
As mentioned above, the Michigan State offer came on September 11, 2021. Since then, Booker has taken numerous unofficial visits to East Lansing, as well as an April 16 official visit.
The Michigan State staff did a great job building a relationship with Booker. The five-star told me at NBPA Top 100 Camp that, of all the coaches recruiting him, he had the best relationship with Tom Izzo.
Michigan State commitment Jeremy Fears also reiterated to me at the u17 USA training camp that he was recruiting Xavier Booker the hardest to join him at Michigan State.
Michigan State’s chances: 85-percent
2. Notre Dame
Anthony Solomon was the point man for Notre Dame on this one. He did a great job getting the Irish in the mix and building a relationship with the family. The Notre Dame offer came in June of 2021, and Booker visited campus multiple times, including a June 23 official visit.
The style of play fits, and the Notre Dame campus is only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Booker’s high school.
Notre Dame’s chances: 7-percent
3. Ohio State
Ohio State pushed the EJ Liddell comparison with Booker, opening his eyes. It was not necessarily their individual style of play, but more the things they had Liddell doing within the offense.
Like with the rest of the schools on this list, Booker took multiple official visits and built a relationship with the staff. He will most likely not take his scheduled September 3 visit to the Buckeyes.
Ohio State’s chances: 4-percent
4. Indiana and Purdue
Both programs were on Booker early in his process, and he took official visits to both in-state schools. So that is why they are listed here.
Indiana or Purdue’s chances: 2-percent each
Final intel
It is no secret Xavier Booker was a top priority for Michigan State. There was a lot of smoke around him committing to the program before his April explosion as a prospect. Sources close to the recruitment say that Booker wanted to play out the travel ball season before making any final decisions.
Sources say Tom Izzo and his staff did a great job in this recruitment. They built the relationship and continued to recruit him hard throughout the process.
While the five-star center has scheduled visits left on the docket, intel says he knows where he wants to go and has made a final decision. Expect a public commitment to Michigan State to be announced in the near future.
On3’s Recruiting Prediction Machine
I have placed my expert pick in On3’s Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM) for Xavier Booker to choose Michigan State. I set my pick with 85-percent confidence.
The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. Starting from the ground up, On3 built an entirely new product that utilizes data, human expertise, and machine learning.