By Matt Norlander

We continue with our series on Jakarr Sampson, tracking the month in the life of an AAU player who’s still being recruited by many schools.

After a weeklong break, Jakarr Sampson is just about ready to play basketball again. In July, a week can feel like two after the marathon these players go through. From the 15th until today Sampson got his mid-July reprieve from competitive ball and rested up at home with friends.

He and his King James Shooting Stars teammates landed in Orlando at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night, and tomorrow they’ll get it again when they go up against the CP3 All-Stars, an AAU team thats boasts highly touted recruits Dezmine Wells (verbally committed to Xavier) and P.J. Hairston (verbally committed to North Carolina). The tip-off will be in the morning.

“It’s been fun, but I’m ready to play again, definitely,” Sampson said.

The biggest news in Sampson’s world the past week was the official scholarship offer he got from Kansas. With that, the Jayhawks officially entered his list, and Sampson updated his outlook thusly, in no particular order: Kansas, Tennessee, Baylor, St. John’s, USC, Michigan State, Louisville.

“I’m still wide open at this point, though,” he said. That could be code for “anybody else want to sneak in an offer before it’s too late”?

Sampson has gotten a chance to talk to every head coach from all the aforementioned schools except KU’s Bill Self. Coaches are permitted one phone call per month to a recruit — Sampson was not sure if Self or someone on the KU staff made the official offer to Dru Joyce, the Sampson’s AAU coach.

“Sometimes the coach just talks to my head coach,” said Sampson, “because they can only call me one time per month, so they don’t want to use all that up right away.”

Sampson spoke about hoping to hear from Self while his teammates in his hotel room attempted to distract him. The mood seemed to be rambunctious. Sometimes I wonder if most of these recruits realize how good they have it right now. Sampson does seem to be aware, and I lucked out on this little month-long project.

Some outside-of-basketball tidbits: Since arriving in Orlando, Sampson and his teammates have enjoyed the sites. They went to Universal Studios Thursday afternoon and also hit up the Nike warehouse at a local outlet mall. Today, it’s a trip to see the big summer blockbuster, “Inception.”

And to show where he’s at, Sampson seemed as excited for that as he was with his latest scholarship offer. From my perspective, it seems he’s taking the recruitment seriously but not letting it dictate his life.