Maryland basketball remains in the thick of the Hunter Dickinson pursuit with the grad transfer set to begin his first official visit to Kansas this afternoon, but they won’t be the only school set to host him this weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrYQqkMboE News surfaced on Thursday morning that Dickinson will officially visit Kentucky beginning Sunday after head coach John Calipari met with the 7-foot-1 forward this week. “ flew up Tuesday to meet with me in Michigan and he talked to me for like two hours. We literally met at the airport, like the little private airport, met there, and then he flew back,” Dickinson said on the latest episode of Roundball. Dickinson’s original stance for not scheduling a visit to Lexington was due to his visit back in high school, giving him a familiarity of the campus and facilities, but the one-on-one conversation changed Dickinson’s stance as he’ll head from Kansas to Kentucky. “Once we talked about some things and then he mentioned they got a new strength coach and that's something that's really important to me. So I was like, okay, well I might as well take a visit there. So we set that up .” The biggest question regarding the Wildcats is whether Oscar Tshiebwe returns for his third season with the program, which Dickinson admitted was a factor in how receptive he was to the Wildcats’ pursuit. “We talked about that situation occurring. We talked about that situation, obviously that's big. That's very contingent on, even if I was like interested in them, that's why I wanted to meet with them, to talk about that, because it's like, that has a lot to do with like me even being interested in them at all. And so we talked about that and so I don't really want to say what was said…obviously whatever we talked about was good enough for me to take the visit.” Before the blue bloods got their crack at Dickinson on campus, the northern Virginia native spent last weekend touring the local schools, first at Georgetown on Saturday then Maryland the following day. “They were good visits. They were good to be home. Two places that I wasn't really able to see coming out of high school so I think it was just really good to be home, but also to kind of see like the facilities and stuff…it was good just to go back there and see two colleges. Obviously I guess like a lot of the students and stuff like that were going crazy…we did a good job though of not really like doing a tour or campus that would've been nuts. They were kind of like efficient, short and like efficient visits. That is kind of what I really wanted like at this point, especially with those schools, it's like, all right, let me talk to the coach. I'll talk to the academic advisor a little bit being a grad transfer. But like seeing the gym, seeing the practice gym, we all want to do the photo shoots, get something to eat with the coaches and stuff like that. That's kind of it. That's really like all you’ve got to do for those visits. “That's why I wanted to do unofficial visits there is because it's like I really, one, it was kind of like spur of the moment, but then two, like I don't really need to see too much. I live there, like I live 20 minutes away from Georgetown.” While Dickinson’s visit to College Park gave him a chance to reunite with his former head coach and new Maryland assistant Mike Jones, it also gave him an extended chance to get to know the Terps’ second-year head coach. “I like Willard. He's actually pretty funny. I didn't know he was that funny. He was a pretty funny guy.” Following this weekend’s round of visits, Hunter Dickinson will head to Villanova beginning next Friday for his third official visit. After that, there’s a “50-50 chance” that a fourth official visit comes to fruition. “I might slide one more in. A max of four and if it was five, it would've to be something that came out of the blue, which is not like I've thought about this school, but I don't know,” he added. “There's a 50-50 chance of four. The fourth one would be just like a one-day trip.” Related Links
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