‘That shows their loyalty’: Wichita’s Gradey Dick talks recruitment, KU basketball
The Sunrise Christian Academy experience has been everything that Gradey Dick had hoped for.
Sunrise is off to a 5-0 start to the season and is the No. 2-ranked high school team in the country. Dick, a 6-foot-7 junior shooting guard who transferred after playing his first two seasons at Collegiate, is averaging 12 points and 5 rebounds on a team loaded with commits to Kansas, Baylor, Tennessee and Minnesota.
The elevated level of basketball has challenged Dick, who has responded by proving why he is one of the most sought-after recruits in the class of 2022. ESPN has him rated as a five-star prospect, while Rivals lists him at No. 37 overall and 247 Sports has him No. 43 overall.
“Obviously I still love Collegiate and all of my people there, but Sunrise has been a great move for me personally,” Dick told The Eagle. “The move was about playing better competition and at Collegiate, I wasn’t really getting that at the 3A level. At Sunrise, we’re playing in big tournaments and I’m going against guys that are D1 talents every day in practice and that’s getting me ready for the next level.”
Dick had the next level on his mind this Monday when he narrowed his list of college choices to eight schools: Alabama, Baylor, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma State, Purdue and Texas Tech.
Notably, the home-state Jayhawks are the program that offered Dick the earliest — on June 23 last summer — among his finalists.
“Having them offer me that early and knowing what they saw in me at an early age, I’m really thankful and I respect that,” Dick said. “That shows their loyalty to me and them keeping that level of recruitment through the years. I still get texts from coach Norm (Roberts) and coach (Bill) Self almost every day. They just show their appreciation and interest in me and that’s really nice.”
The Wichita native was raised in a Jayhawk household, as the family cheered on the basketball team and attended games at Allen Fieldhouse. All three of Gradey’s older siblings have either graduated from or are currently attending KU.
Dick said while playing for the Jayhawks would be special, he’s just as excited about the possibilities of playing for the other seven programs. Although he cut his list down to eight teams, Dick said he is in no rush to make a final decision any time soon.
“It’s always going to be about finding the best basketball fit for me,” Dick said. “It’s pretty cool to get an offer from the team that I followed growing up, but in the end, it’s going to be about what’s best for me personally. That’s why you see some schools that are far away like Florida and Alabama.”
Making a final list of eight choices involved some hard cuts and one of the hardest according to Dick was the omission of Wichita State, the hometown program who was the first Division I team to offer him last summer.
In the end, the uncertainty with who the head coach at WSU would be when Dick would arrive in 2022 eliminated the Shockers. The same reason hurt WSU in the recruitment of another local player in Campus senior Sterling Chapman, who was originally committed to WSU but instead signed with Tulsa following long-time coach Gregg Marshall’s resignation just before this season.
“(WSU) was close and they’re right by my home, but with everything going on there, I didn’t really want to bother with that,” Dick said. “It was hard telling coach (Lou) Gudino and the other coaches that I wasn’t (going to include WSU). They wished me the best and I have nothing but respect for them.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
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