According to the clues, it's down to West Virginia and Kentucky still wide open for Adreian Payne

The most interesting aspect of the recruiting is how the schools posture and position themselves for the players. But on the other side of the fence, the actual recruits play a chess game amongst themselves, posturing for position while waiting to see what school may fir their skill set. We have seen a couple of these posturing battles between the recruits lately.

First was the race to commit between Doron Lamb and Stacey Poole. When word leaked that a Poole commit was evident, there were a few last minute visits to the Lamb camp and it seemed that Doron would commit first. In the end, Poole won that showdown. That resulted in Lamb having an extended fling with Kansas and Oklahoma, seemingly forgetting about UK. But now it's known that UK is back in Lamb's final three.

Then we had the Kyrie Irving/Josh Selby showdown. Word leaked out that Selby would not be attending UK's Big Blue Madness because of the presence of Irving at the event. And now a similar standoff is developing between big men C.J. Leslie and Adreian Payne.

Leslie has long been considered a UK lean and he had visits planned to UK for both the October 3 weekend and for Big Blue Madness, yet for whatever reason, did not make either event. There were reports of a Calipari trip to visit Payne recently and Payne had been making his tour of other college campuses.

I am not really sure what happened with Payne but it appears that he was supposed to visit Tucson with his HS coach and that the HS coach never showed up and that Payne went with his Grandmother instead. Now usually after a visit, the recruit releases a few statements like "the visit was great, blah, blah, blah" but it appears that the silence from Payne and his coach is peculiar to those who follow Arizona recruiting.

Payne was in West Virginia last night and apparently the West Virginia press feel that it is now a two school race between UK and West Virginia. I have not seen much else to verify that Payne has cut his list, but in the case of figuring out the recruiting landscape, sometimes you have to follow the clues.

**UPDATE** According to Dustin Rumbaugh from Kentucky Sports Radio, the above report from West Virginia stating that Payne is down to UK and West Virginia is FALSE. I thought it was odd that I had not heard about the list cutting from say, Adam Zagoria or Rumbaugh first, but sometimes you follow the hints.