Five-star guard visits Ohio State

The first summer evaluation period for college basketball teams began on Wednesday, but coach Chris Holtmann and other members of Ohio State’s staff stayed home to host one of its primary recruiting targets.

DJ Carton, a five-star point-guard prospect from Bettendorf, Iowa, made his third and final official visit to OSU. He is ranked the No. 2 point guard nationally and No. 21 overall prospect for 2019 by the 247sports composite ratings.

Carton, 6 feet 1, 180 pounds, has visited Indiana and Michigan. On Sunday, he announced he had narrowed his three finalists to those schools and the Buckeyes.

Curtis Clark, the coach at Bettendorf High School, had said in the spring that Carton’s plan was to choose a college this fall. That timeline might have been accelerated.

“All the attention is probably wearing on him a little bit and he’s hopeful he can make this decision sooner rather than later,” Clark told The Dispatch. “There’s a lot of people (vying) for his attention and I think he’s looking forward to going back to being a high school kid and making life simple again.”

Clark said Carton’s current series of visits is an attempt to gain clarity on where he wants to attend school. If he finds it, “then I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes the decision in a week or two,” Clark said. “If it does nothing other than confuse him more, he might be looking back into September.”

In trimming his list, Carton eliminated the home-state Iowa Hawkeyes from consideration, as well as Xavier and Marquette.

“I know he had a little regret about that just because he knew he was going to be letting a lot of people down, but he just didn’t feel like that was the right fit for him,” Clark said. “I told him, you’ve got to go with that, then.”

Carton will not participate in the first live evaluation period because he’s dealing with a slight knee sprain, and he will take the ACT this Saturday. He hopes to be able to play AAU basketball before the summer is over, Clark said.