The opening weekend of college football is upon us, which means hundreds of college basketball prospects are on the road and taking official visits to schools. Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones together on the Baylor campus is the headline-grabber, as my colleague Jeff Borzello highlighted earlier. But a Big Ten school is dealing with something just as important, relatively speaking. And that Big Ten school is Iowa.
Tyler Ulis will be on the Iowa campus this weekend.
So this is a massive weekend for Iowa.
Ulis is a top-30 prospect nationally and one of the top three point guards still available -- the others being the aforementioned Jones and Australian native Dante Exum, the latter of whom is not expected to attend college at all. So Ulis is really one of the top two point guards still available in the Class of 2014, and sources have told CBSSports.com that Iowa has a legitimate shot to land him.
Are the Hawkeyes the favorite?
Probably not.
Kentucky recently offered Ulis a scholarship, and it's always going to be difficult to beat John Calipari for a point guard despite what Emmanuel Mudiay's commitment to SMU over the Wildcats suggested last weekend. Michigan State is heavily involved, too. And it's fair to assume Iowa was in a better spot before Mudiay rejected UK in favor of SMU, because that decision forced Kentucky to turn its attention more toward Ulis, and, again, that can't possibly be a good thing for Fran McCaffery.
Still, Iowa is in there.
And Ulis will be at Iowa this weekend.
Who knows if the Hawkeyes will land the Chicago native's signature on a national letter of intent? But being this involved is still an undeniable postive for a program that's secured -- Did you realize this? -- just one consensus top-50 prospect in the past decade.
