McD's AA: Five-star Allen updates recruitment

CHICAGO -- One of the few five-star prospects left on the market in the class of 2016, 6-foot-9 power forward Jarret Allen is a mystery man. The big man from Austin (Texas) St. Stephen's spent a lot of time on the campuses of Houston and Texas during the 2015-16 season, but he maintains that he's open.

Allen has taken official visits to Kansas, Notre Dame, Houston and Kentucky and could take one more if he wants to. However he doesn't think he'll need to take any other visits.

At the McDonald's All-American game, Allen broke down what's important to him, talked about some of his visits and discussed what's next.

"It's been tough and every school has something that you want so you have to pick what is most important to you. The community of the school and how they develop their bigs and play through them is important."

"I've been to Texas five or six times maybe. They are like 15 minutes away from home so I really know all of their players and their coaches and I've really been able to talk to the players and see what they say about the coaches. They have like six guys leaving so they say that I could fit in right away."

"Houston is almost the same as Texas, They say that I can fit in and come in right away and play and that they would run the offense through me."

"I wouldn't say that it's fair to say it's between Texas and Houston. There's Kansas, Notre Dame and Kentucky and basically all of my schools I'm still looking at. I haven't really pinpointed what I want just yet."

"I will know how to make the decision on my time frame. I'm not going to think about it in the next two weeks because I have this game and the Hoops Summit. I'm probably going to think about it more after the Hoops Summit."

Allen says that he is open and it is clear that he's not feeling rushed to make a decision. However, checking the wind on his recruitment it does seem like Texas and Houston have developed the best relationships with him. Certainly the playing time situations at each school look favorable.

Allen says that he's going to focus on the McDonald's game and the Hoops Summit and that seems to be pretty reasonable. Both are pretty time intensive events and he appears to be pretty genuinely torn about what to do.

Though no timeline has been set, the second signing period is rapidly approaching and it would seem reasonable to expect that a decision would have to come shortly after he finishes playing in the All-Star games.