First Mitch McGary, now T.J. Warren. Via John Clay on Twitter:
In the last 24 hours, two major recruits have bowed out of Big Blue Madness, and one of them is going to a competitor's event. However, there seems to be a disagreement about whether or not T.J. Warren was ever actually invited and/or planned to attend, according to Marc Maggard of True Blue Kentucky. I am agnostic on this issue, so I'll let the recruiting experts haggle over the facts.
The good news is that there are still a good number of recruits coming next Friday, including the #1 recruit in the nation:
Seniors expected to attend Big Blue Madness: Shabazz Muhammad, DaJuan Coleman, commitment Archie Goodwin, Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley.
Three or four of those guys and I'd say we're #1 again for sure. We have received a commitment from Goodwin and your humble correspondent expects a commitment from Alex Poythress either shortly before or shortly after Madness is over.
Given the change to UNC's opening night, I suspect that Warren is leaning toward the Tar Heels. Roy Williams has been on Warren a long time, and he is from North Carolina. As we saw with Perry Ellis, the elite programs defend their turf pretty well when they really try hard.
If I were a betting man, I would bet Mitch McGary is Duke bound. He's the prototype for the kind of player the Blue Devils covet, and I expect they've put on the full court press since their entreaties to Poythress got them no traction. The official story is that Duke called Poythress and told him they were no longer interested, and it's possible that the McGary recruitment took a turn in their favor that allowed them to do that to avoid "losing" a recruiting battle to UK.