Prized 2016 recruit Amir Coffey talks injury, GameDay on unofficial visit

 AMES —  Amir Coffey’s being courted by well over a dozen high-profile basketball programs.

 Saturday — when ESPN GameDay graced Hilton Coliseum for the first time ever — the injured Hopkins (Minn.) High School standout also made his first trip to Ames for a basketball game.

 But did the highly-skilled 6-7 junior guard watch the GameDay festivities?

 “I did,” said Coffey, who attended 3-4 ISU football games in the fall and noted he has not began to pare down his voluminous offer list to a group of finalists. “Pretty crazy all those fans here. Pretty cool.”

 Coffey — who hasn’t taken an official visit anywhere yet, but said he plans to take all five — suffered a season-ended ACL injury last month and said he’s well into the physical therapy stage of recovery.

 Doctors have told him he may be good to go by July, but he wants to make sure he’s fully healed before he begins playing basketball again.

 “I’m just trying to stay mentally strong and not get down about it,” said Coffey, whose list of offers includes the Cyclones, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan State, Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana. “Just get back as soon as possible and do everything the doctors tell me to (do).”

 For now, that includes working on flexibility and riding a bike. In the future he knows he’ll have to work on trimming that offers list.

 “I’m really pretty open about it,” said Coffey, whose father, Richard, played for the Gophers in the late 1980s. “I’ll probably talk to my parents a little bit about it and maybe in the near future cut my list down a little bit.”