R.J. Barrett was the No. 1 player in the ESPN 60 for 2019, but recently made the decision to reclassify up to 2018. Barrett led Montverde (Montverde, Fla.) all the way to the DICKS’s Nationals title game last season. He followed that up by leading Team Canada to the gold medal in the U19 World Championships in Egypt this summer. Now he’s one of the most dominant players in the country, regardless of class, with every top college coach hot on his trail. Barrett has agreed to give USA TODAY HSS exclusive access into his world by chronicling everything from intimate details about his recruitment to his everyday life in a monthly blog.

What’s up world this is R.J. Barrett coming at you with blog No. 3 so let’s get it rolling!

Well, after thinking things over with my family for a while I have officially decided to reclassify to the 2018 class.

Really, it’s been a thought of mine for the last year, but I wanted to wait and see how the season would go and how school would go and when everything went well it became more and more real so I made the decision to go ahead and do it.

I’m right on track to graduate in 2018 and academically everything is great.

I can’t say that there was one thing that tipped my decision to reclassify; but it was more a collective decision based on the whole year.

My family and I feel like this will be beneficial for me because I’m ready to move up and to be in college a year earlier.

Obviously, I was ranked No. 1 in the 2019 class and now that I’m moving up to 2018 my goal won’t change.

I still want to be the best player in the class and the only way to make that happen is through hard work. We work really hard at Montverde so I know another year there won’t do anything but benefit me.

On my recruitment, I will say that the schools that are showing the most interest are Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and UCLA. A few more have reached out and those schools are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, USC, UConn and UNLV.

Not too much will change with my approach to the recruitment; we’ll just do the visits a little sooner than we probably would have if I stayed in 2019.

I haven’t set anything up yet for sure with visits, but we’ll get to that.

Right now I’m training very hard doing two-a-days getting in a lot of skill work.

People don’t see me playing in tournaments, but I’m getting better every day working on my body, shooting, just everything to get better.

OK everyone, as always, I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog. It’s definitely a load off to have this decision out of the way.

I’m gonna get out of here, but check back soon for my next blog.

Big decisions are coming.

Follow R.J. Barrett:

Twitter: @RjBarrett6