It's an Wisconsin biased artical
I was going to make this very point. Whenever a recruit is interviewed by someone with ties to a specific program, the article usually has a slant toward that program. With that said, I do wonder if proximity to his family, i.e. Wisconsin, will have a significant impact of him ending up a Badger. Having your family watch you play in person is a tough situation to turn down when that program is a very good one, which Wisconsin is.
I've felt for a long time that we had a better than 50% shot at landing him, but I'm beginning to feel differently after reading this article for not only the proximity reason, but also the due to a possible delay in Stone's decision. I'd love to land Stone, who seems like the more ready to contribute 5 of the lot and one that seems like an elite big to begin with, but with so many good options, I don't think KO will or even should hold off too long in pulling the trigger on the 5 he plans to offer. At what point does KO pull the trigger on Batiste? (BTW, are we no longer recruiting Koumadje? Not that I favor him over Bastiste, but it's always good to have as many irons in the fire as possible.) Of all the positions we are recruiting, I'm okay with them getting one of the less heralded bigs since we've won just about all our NCs without an elite one. Of the 3, Emeka was the only one that was a dominating 5 during that particular NC run. Jake, Hasheem and the collection of bigs last year were clearly in the serviceable category IMO. Note that I realize that Thabeet was highly regarded his final season at UConn and got drafted high, but his overall game, especially on offense, was far from elite. I think KO could develop Baste or Koumadje into a serviceable big man who can defend the post, rebound and give us enough of a modest threat close to the basket. I feel similar about 4s. We rarely if ever had an elite physical 4 that can stretch the D as well.
It's the 1s through 3s that I like us landing elite talent. Now that doesn't mean Burger-AAs. We've had some very good under-the-radar ones that JC knew would be very good, such as Lamb, Baz and Ray, to name a few. None were highly ranked, but JC knew he some something special in all of them.
Anyhow, getting back to my point, I'd be shocked if KO doesn't end up telling Stone's camp as well as a few of the other elite recruits that have UConn interest, that they're now in the first of those at a given position to say yes get's the ship and once they run out of ships to offer, UConn will no longer be an option for them. If it hasn't happened already, that message might have been give to Clarke's and Jones' camps. It's possible that KO is holding out a tad longer for Jones, but that message might have or will be delivered tomorrow during the in-home visit with him since Clarke just visited this past weekend. We can only guess if KO pressed for a commitment over the weekend or not. If Clarke simply needs more time and visits to decide, he's bought UConn more time, though history tells us the odds of a recruit committing to a program after leaving that official visit w/out a decision drops dramatically. Now that we're into the in-home and official visits, I'm okay with KO taking the bird-in-the-hand approach with many of these recruits. If there is one or maybe two that really stand above the rest, maybe it's okay to ride it out longer, but the longer it goes the bigger the risk that you end up missing out on all your targets at a given position. Getting a Batiste now over waiting and not getting any 5 in this class, might be the prudent approach. UConn has won 4 NCs operating under that MO and as much as I'd love to have a huge elite 2015 class, I'm okay with a very good one.
I agree 100%. There are probably a number of reasons for this, but I think one is the hometown team tends leave an open ship for the local elite recruit since they tend to like their chances as it gets later into the recruiting season. They also are likely to find creative ways to free up a ship as well. Never seen that happen at UConn for a local kid, have we. 
Unless I'm mixing him up with another recruit, I thought I had heard that he had improved his conditioning, but it looked like there was still some room to improve on that. If he adds more muscle, less fat and better conditioning, he's going to be a beast at the college level. Not saying that he won't without much improvement in those areas, but based on the effort I noticed in that game, if he plays like that against some upperclassmen that are close to his size but simply want it more, he'll have his hands full and won't dominate as many think that he would. If he chooses UConn, KO will make sure he improves in those 3 areas. I have little doubt about that.
