As told to Chris Parish

Every time there’s a basketball game, an event, a tournament, or whatever it is, I hear from people.

"Oh, I heard so-and-so has offered you."

"Hey, what are you hearing from this school?"

Right now I try not to think about it too much, but it’s everywhere. Sometimes I’ll read stuff and it’ll say a school I’m interested in or something I said, and I think, ‘Man, I never said that.’ I don’t know where they get this stuff sometimes.

The first time I was recruited was the beginning of the summer before my ninth-grade year. There were all kinds of different schools interested, and I hadn’t even played any high school ball yet. I liked it, though. It made me feel like I was special.

I don’t really have a dream school yet. I’ve heard from a lot of schools, and they’re all great schools. But there are definitely a few where if they call me, I’m calling them right back — schools like Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina.

I look at things like how they run their offense, but there’s a lot that goes into it. I want to know what players went to the NBA from your team, how long the coach has been there and how he’s done, who they’re bringing back, stuff like that. And I’ll talk to anyone. I am always interested in a school. I don’t blow anyone off, because you never know what can happen. But in the back of my mind, I usually know if I’m interested or not.

There’s a lot of people who talk to me about recruiting, but there’s only a few people I trust — my mom, my dad, my godfather and my coach. I trust them because they’ve been there from Day 1, and I know they really only want what’s best for me.

I’ve seen people make some pretty big mistakes with recruiting, like they commit too early and then end up decommitting. I don’t want that to happen to me. When I make my decision, I want it to be for good. Even if the coach at the school I’ve committed to gets fired, I might stay if they bring in a coach that I like.

There’s a lot of NCAA rules that you have to follow during the recruiting process. I don’t know anything about them, really. I know some of the basic ones — like you can only be at a campus for a certain amount of hours on your official visit. I’m really going to try to follow all of them, even the little ones. And I definitely wouldn’t take any money. You know how Cam Newton went through all that at Auburn? John Wall got suspended in his first game at Kentucky. I don’t want to go through any of that.

Recruit X is a star underclassman who is being recruited by multiple Division I colleges. He agreed to speak to ESPNHS anonymously.