Ranking Best Landing Spots for Swanigan After Decommitment from MSU

Just when it seemed like the 2015 recruiting store had closed up shop, one prized recruit decided to put himself back on the market.

Caleb Swanigan, a 5-star center from Fort Wayne, Indiana, decommitted from Michigan State on Thursday. ESPN's Jeff Goodman was the first to report the news, though no reason for the move has been cited.

The 6'8", 265-pound big man is rated by 247Sports as the No. 18 overall player in the 2015 class, the fourth-best center and the top player in Indiana, where he was named the state's Mr. Basketball. He had committed to MSU on April 10, declaring "once a Spartan, always a Spartan" on Twitter, though he never signed a letter of intent.

Now that Swanigan is once again unattached, schools that were previously recruiting him hard before—and maybe some that weren't?—will be coming out of the woodwork in hopes of landing one of the last big available prospects of the class. He had 18 Division I offers, according to 247Sports.

Where are the most likely destinations for Swanigan? We rank the top possibilities, factoring in need, fit and sales pitch.

5. Chicago State

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Laugh all you want, but Division I doormat Chicago State has been in on Caleb Swanigan longer than any other program, offering him a scholarship in middle school.

Cougars coach Tracy Dildy has kept in touch with Swanigan since then via the recruit's guardian, Roosevelt Barnes, and when Dildy was an assistant at Ole Miss a decade ago he recruited older brother Carl Swanigan to Oxford.

The Cougars were 8-24 this past season and have won only 42 games in five seasons under Dildy. They last made a postseason tournament in 2013, losing in the first round of the CIT.

None of Chicago State's four signees for 2015-16 garnered a rating from 247Sports. Landing Swanigan would propel that class into the top 50 nationally, at the very least.

4. Michigan State

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Here's a little-mentioned fact about college basketball recruiting: players decommit all the time, and quite often they still end up signing with that school in the long run. Just because Caleb Swanigan backed out of his verbal pledge doesn't mean he cannot—or will not—be a Spartan. It only means he doesn't want to be bound to that previous declaration.

It's not like he's the first teenager in existence to rush to a decision without thinking it through. For whatever reason, Swanigan decided he no longer felt comfortable committing himself to play for Tom Izzo this fall, something that should have been considered a possibility since he never signed his national letter of intent.

Dan Kilbridge of the Indianapolis Star quoted Swanigan on April 29 as still being "100 percent" committed to MSU, despite having not made the decision official with a signature. He told Kilbridge he planned to meet with his father and send the LOI in "in the next week," but that never happened.

A decent number of top recruits this year declared they weren't going to sign their letters to avoid being bound to a program and then unable to back out if something happened that made them want to look elsewhere. The late signing period for recruits runs through May 20, and until an LOI is received (or the player enrolls in school) his team's coaches cannot comment publicly on him.

Therefore, Izzo and his staff can't talk about losing Swanigan because they never could chat about actually having him. But don't doubt they aren't still working the phones, texts and in-person visits hoping to bring him back to East Lansing.

3. Kentucky

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After seemingly getting every recruit he ever wanted for several years, so much so that he had an overabundance of talent that necessitated a risky platoon system for this past season, Kentucky coach John Calipari came up surprisingly short on nearly every major prospect that the Wildcats had on their short list this spring.

Adam Zagoria of SNY noted on May 1 that Calipari missed on Jaylen Brown, Thomas Bryant, Cheick Diallo, Malik Newman, Ivan Rabb, Stephen Zimmerman and Swanigan. All of those players are rated 20th or better by 247Sports, and five of them were post players who could have helped replenish a frontcourt that saw four forwards or centers turn pro early after Kentucky lost in the Final Four.

Critics have speculated that Calipari's use of a platoon, where he essentially had two five-man units and would swap them out en masse to spread out playing time, influenced many of this year's top recruits to look elsewhere to ensure they got enough playing time.

Not surprisingly, Calipari took to his website earlier this week and wrote about how he went to that system for his players' sake and hopes to never have to do so again.

"I think we wrote the book on platooning this year, but I hope we stick it on the shelf and never have to use it again," Calipari wrote.

Is it a coincidence that not two days after this blog was posted that Swanigan, one of the players Calipari thought he had a chance at, decides to re-open his recruitment?

2. Purdue

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When a recruit who was planning to leave his home state for college suddenly changes his mind, the idea that he might fear homesickness regularly comes to mind. But that's not the only reason that Purdue is a strong contender for Caleb Swanigan's services.

It's less than three hours from Swanigan's Fort Wayne home to West Lafayette, where Purdue is located, but it's not much further to Bloomington (site of Indiana's main campus) and there's been no buzz about the Hoosiers being in the mix to land Swanigan.

There are two main factors in play when talk turns to Swanigan becoming a Boilermaker, one regarding personnel and the other regarding comfort level.

Indiana signed Thomas Bryant, a 5-star power forward who is 6'10" and will essentially be playing the same position as Swanigan. Purdue hasn't landed any post players for 2015, but it does have 7-footer A.J. Hammons coming back for his senior year.

Hammons could serve as a mentor to Swanigan during his freshman year, allowing the newcomer to ease into college and not have to be a key player right away. Though highly rated, Swanigan isn't generally regarded as a likely one-and-done player.

The other hook for Purdue is Swanigan's guardian, Roosevelt Barnes, a former Purdue and Detroit Lions football player whom Swanigan lives with. Combine that with the chance to learn from Hammons and to stay close to home and that might explain why ESPN analyst Dan Dakich tweeted Thursday night that Swanigan to Purdue is "done."

1. California

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Before pledging to Michigan State on April 10, all signs pointed to Caleb Swanigan being the first major piece of what would end up being a monster class for California. Nearly every expert who logged a prediction with 247Sports' Crystal Ball list picked the Golden Bears, and even with a handful picking Purdue since Swanigan's decommitment, Cal remains the front-runner with 48 percent of all predictions.

After he decided to go with the Spartans, Cal still managed to strike it rich on the recruiting trail, first grabbing 5-star power forward (and Oakland native) Ivan Rabb and then landing No. 4 overall prospect Jaylen Brown, a small forward from Georgia.

While much of the discussion has centered on Purdue since Swanigan decommitted, California should be considered very much in play. Lindsay Brauner of Rivals.com tweeted Thursday that Cal coaches had been in contact with Swanigan that day, and he could end up being the one player separating the Bears from their current status as a mid-tier Pac-12 team to a major challenger to Arizona's recent reign.

The Bears' class is ranked fifth in the nation, and if Swanigan were to be added to what would be a five-man class that ranking could rise to No. 1.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.