When Matthew Hurt watches the college basketball programs recruiting him the hardest, the area that seems to interest him more than anything is which teams can best prepare him for the NBA.
"My goal is to make it to the NBA," said Hurt, who exploded for 51 points and 17 rebounds in leading Rochester John Marshall Thursday to a win against Armstrong in the Rotary U.S. Bank Holiday Classic at the Mayo Civic Center. "I'm trying to get with the right coaches who can lead me in that direction."

The 6-foot-9, 215-pound five-star Class of 2019 forward added the last of the blue bloods to his list of scholarship offers after Kentucky coach John Calipari joined North Carolina's Roy Williams in attendance to see Hurt's 48-point performance Dec. 14 against Red Wing.
Calipari's pitch is that Kentucky is the No. 1 program to help Hurt achieve his goal of being drafted into the NBA after his freshman year in college. While Hurt doesn't have a favorite school right now, he says the Wildcats being a one-and-done factory is a big plus.
"They're a great one-and-done school," he said. "Their coaches especially run a really good system. They have really successful players with my kind of skill set. They have great one-and-done players and their coaches are great. Facilities are nice."
Hurt, who is averaging 39 points and nearly 14 rebounds a game this season for JM, says the colleges recruiting him the hardest at the moment are North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, UCLA, Minnesota and Indiana.
"I just try to take one player from each team and what I can see myself in their system and how they run things," Hurt said. "I also like to see if they lose a couple games how they bounce back (Gophers won three straight after a two-game slide). Making my decision, I'm just trying to make the best decision for myself: culture, winning and how I fit in the system are key factors. Those are the factors I'm going to take in."
There's no player on the Gophers' roster right now Hurt can compare himself to, he said. But he's having fun watching the recent success of his older brother, Michael, a sophomore forward.