Five-star basketball recruit Romeo Langford is no longer considering Louisville

Romeo Langford, one of the top basketball players in the class of 2018, is no longer considering Louisville, his father told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday night.

Langford — a 6-foot-5 shooting guard from New Albany, Ind. — said this summer that he considered Louisville to be the “hometown” school in his recruitment, and the Cardinals were seen as the favorite by many recruiting analysts. New Albany is located just across the Ohio River from U of L’s campus.

At the time that the news of Langford dropping the Cardinals became public Wednesday night, Louisville was still the favorite on his 247Sports Crystal Ball page.

U of L Coach Rick Pitino was put on administrative leave Wednesday, one day after his program was implicated in a federal investigation into corruption in college basketball. Pitino cannot be fired summarily, according to his contract, which requires 10 days notice. Louisville is expected to part ways with Pitino.

Tim Langford said that his son is still looking at Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, Vanderbilt, UCLA and North Carolina.

The Langford family visited Vanderbilt last weekend and is expected to visit UCLA this weekend. Langford has also set up visits to Kansas, North Carolina and Indiana for next month. That leaves UK as the only school on his list without a visit date.

Tim Langford told the Herald-Leader last week that he still had not heard from UK’s coaches about setting up an in-home visit or a visit to the university’s campus. Langford didn’t indicate Wednesday night that there had been any contact with the Wildcats’ coaching staff since then, only saying that UK was “still on the list.”

Langford’s father did say that his son would make another cut to that list before the start of his senior season, which is coming up in a few weeks.

Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel tweeted Tuesday that he had been “talking to college coaches all day” and several believed that Langford’s final two schools would be Kansas and Indiana, with coaches telling him that a Langford commitment to the Jayhawks was “almost done.”

Kansas Coach Bill Self and Indiana Coach Archie Miller have both met with Langford in New Albany this week.

Langford — the No. 5 overall player in the class — has often spoken highly of Pitino despite the program’s recent scandal involving strippers. He told the Herald-Leader in June that NCAA penalties levied against the Cardinals as a result of that case would not have any impact on his recruitment.

“I didn’t think too much about it,” he said then. “I mean, everybody knew they were going to get in trouble, so it wasn’t really that big of a shocker. It didn’t change the way that I feel about them.”

Langford’s decision is another major blow to Louisville’s recruiting efforts. Within an hour of Pitino’s ouster Wednesday afternoon, the Cardinals lost their only two commitments for the class of 2018: top-10 recruit Anfernee Simons and top-50 recruit Courtney Ramey.

U of L now has zero commitments for next year’s class.

This story was originally published September 27, 2017 at 9:21 PM with the headline "Five-star basketball recruit Romeo Langford is no longer considering Louisville."