2017 point guard Alex Barcello, the top basketball player in Arizona, has the Butler Bulldogs in his Top 5

It’s admittedly been a while since we’ve done some basketball ‘crootin news so forgive us for falling back. Hopefully this post begins the start of a new initiative around here. At least a consistent one.

Anyways, news! The Butler Bulldogs received some good news on Thursday evening as they are in amongst a now minimal field of contenders for the services of 2017’s best basketball player in the state of Arizona. Point guard Alex Barcello of Corona del Sol High School announced Thursday that BU made the cut along with four other prominent high-major programs.

To no surprise the in-state Arizona Wildcats will be vying for Barcello’s services and joining them from the Pac-12 are the Stanford Cardinal. Butler will have to compete for Barcello with the in-state rival Indiana Hoosiers and then there’s also Virginia Cavaliers who made the cut for the 6-foot-2, 165-pound hooper from the desert.

If you’re into 247Sports’ Crystal Ball predictions, it doesn’t look great for BU right now as UofA holds a firm lead over Stanford. The Wildcats hold an 89%-11% edge over Stanford over the nine predictions that have been made but, as they say, it’s never over until it’s over. In fact, the news of Barcello’s Top 5 comes after it was made known that he’s currently visiting the school in Indianapolis which was first reported by Brian Snow of Scout.com.

We don’t know if Barcello had his mind made up before or after the visit to BU but it’s pleasant of course for Bulldogs fans that he was and has been wowed enough to put the ‘Dawgs in his Top 5. If he were to commit to Butler, he would be the first recruit from Arizona to commit to the program since at least the year 2000, as 247Sports’ all-time recruits list features zero players from the state among the 42 recruits listed.

Thus far, BU has one commit in the 2017 class. Interestingly enough he too is a point guard as Cooper Neese, a three-star player from Cloverdale, Indiana is the lone man for Chris Holtmann so far. The addition of Barcello would bring them up to third in the Big East if no other changes were made to the rest of the field at the moment, and to No. 15 in the nation assuming nothing changes around the country either.

We’ll see what happens from here with the Bulldogs, but suffice it to say: a promising situation could be on the horizon here, and is certainly worth watching going forward.