Academics important to five-star in-state forward

CHARLOTTE - Kris Wilkes clearly has a very promising future playing basketball.

The North Central High School blue-chipper, though, isn't looking at that future through a narrow lens.

The Rivals.com five-star Class of 2017 forward has maintained his long-standing commitment to studying engineering in college.

"After basketball drops, what are you going to do then?" Wilkes said Tuesday at the Under Armour All-America Camp in Charlotte. "I still want to make money and stuff. If I don't make it to the NBA or get hurt and can't play, I want something to fall back on."

The 6-foot-6 small forward has talked about engineering since the beginning of his high school career and reiterated it this week, as the July prior to his junior year at North Central gets underway.

"I really like math now," Wilkes said. "When I work hard, it's easy for me."

Academics, then, would seem like an important piece of the puzzle for Purdue as it pursues the top-25 junior.

Wilkes was asked Tuesday if the Boilermakers were among the programs he's looking most closely at.

"Definitely," he said. "They're one of the top engineering programs in the country and that's pretty nice."

Purdue has recruited Wilkes since before his freshman year at North Central and has hosted him on campus enough that he said he's lost count.

"I really like the coaches. I get along really well with them," Wilkes said. "A lot of Indiana players are going there, so it can't be too bad. It must be a nice place. I'll look at them this year and see how they play with the new players, Ryan Cline, guys like that."

Rivals.com's No. 18 junior nationally, Wilkes has offers from Purdue, Indiana, Xavier, Butler, Kansas, Illinois and Vanderbilt.

Kentucky, which he and AAU teammate Paul Scruggs just visited, is among the others watching him closely.

Wilkes said he's also hearing from Cal, UCLA, Stanford and Cornell and hopes to visit those schools.

There will be many, many others.

"I really want to look into the relationship between the staff, the relationship between (players) and them, because I don't want to think I'll have a good relationship with them, then get there and not like it. And then (I'll look at) the quality of the players coming in and the role I'd play for that team."

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