Northwestern basketball misses final cut for local 2018 wing Talen Horton-Tucker

Highly touted Simeon guard Talen Horton-Tucker released his final 13 schools Sunday evening, and Northwestern did not make the list.

Whether this is a result of Chris Collins and his staff looking elsewhere or Horton-Tucker’s greater level of interest in 13 other schools, we don’t quite know. But since Ryan Young’s commitment on Wednesday and perhaps even before that, Northwestern had seemed rather cold on Horton-Tucker and vice-versa. His failure to include the Wildcats, while disappointing, does not come as a huge surprise.

The local product’s final 13 included, in the order he revealed them: Illinois, Michigan State, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Kansas, Saint Louis, Dayton, Missouri, Iowa State, Ohio State, Xavier, Goergetown and Michigan. Notably, Arizona State, Boston College, DePaul, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Purdue, Texas A&M, UNLV and Virginia Tech were left off his lengthy list.

For Chris Collins and Northwestern, this news doesn’t necessarily change its current situation. There is one spot available in the 2018 class and it seems to have come down to Miller Kopp or Saddiq Bey. Collins is visiting Kopp for a home visit on Sept. 10 and then the Houston native will come to Evanston for an official visit the weekend of Sept. 15. Bey is visiting Northwestern the following week, potentially putting pressure on Kopp to pull the trigger on his official. Reeling in either Kopp or Bey would be a terrific finish to an impressive recruiting class, albeit without a single Chicagoland talent like Horton-Tucker.