Kansas commitment Marcus Adams Jr. officially joined the KU basketball program on Monday after signing his national letter of intent with the Jayhawks.
The 6-foot-8, 205-pound Adams reclassified into the 2023 class and will join the program this summer for the 2023-24 season.
Adams, who hails from Torrance, California, committed to Kansas on March 11 as a member of the Class of 2024. KU was not initially on his list of five finalists, but an official visit to KU in late February quickly changed that. When he released his top three and teased his announcement date after his KU visit, Adams had KU, UCLA and Syracuse on it and had removed Mississippi State, Oregon and Texas.
Eight days after choosing KU, Adams announced that he was reclassifying into the current recruiting class.
Adams becomes the fourth player in KU’s incoming freshman class to sign with the school. The other three — four-star guards/wings Elmarko Jackson, Chris Johnson and Jamari McDowell — signed with KU in November.
“We started recruiting Marcus very late in the process,” said Kansas coach Bill Self in a news release announcing Adams’ signing. “Coach (Kurtis) Townsend was the point recruiter with Marcus. When we had Marcus and his family in on an official visit, we just really connected. He certainly fills a need.”
That need, according to both Self and KU’s statistics from last season, is 3-point shooting. In losing Jalen Wilson, Gradey Dick and likely Kevin McCullar Jr., the Jayhawks are losing 182 of their 251 3-point makes from a season ago. If you add transfer-portal departure Joe Yesufu and his 24 triples last season to the list, the number climbs above 200 and repre-sents 82% of KU’s 3-pointers from the 2022-23 season.
“He’s 6-foot-8 and can shoot the basketball,” Self said of Ad-ams. “He had two games this year, one in which he made 11 3s and the other which he made 13 3s. He’s good with the ball in his hands and can make plays for others, as well. We think he is very underrated and a youngster that can find immediate minutes with the departure of our tall wings from last year.”
Playing for Nathaniel Narbonne High last season, Adams av-eraged 28.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5 assists per game. He tallied three 40-point games, including one 50-point outing.
A four-star prospect by most major recruiting sites, Adams won the 2023 John R. Wooden High School Player of the Year Award for the Los Angeles City Section Open Division.
Adams and the rest of the incoming freshman class is ex-pected to report to campus for summer workouts in early June. They’ll be four of what could be as many as seven or eight newcomers on the 2023-24 Kansas squad, as the Jayhawks continue to do work in the transfer portal in an attempt to fill the open scholarships that came available by five Jayhawks entering the portal after the end of the season.
Photo courtesy of Kansas Athletics
