Curtis Kelly is one of the top recruits in the country, but that didn’t necessarily mean he could wait as long as he might have liked to pick a college.

So after a visit to Storrs earlier this month, the 6-8 forward from Rice decided he would rather end the wait and, on Tuesday night, made a verbal commitment to Connecticut.

“College is a business and they’re not going to wait for you,” Kelly said of his rationale to end the recruiting process before his senior year. “There’s plenty of other players they want and if you sit around, it might not be there for you.”

Kelly, the Post’s CHSAA player of the year as a junior, also considered Texas, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, Pitt and Florida. He probably had more time than he believed – but those around him said he was better off without the distraction as he heads into his final year at Rice.

Kelly – not always considered a tireless worker – could benefit from playing under the strict hand of head coach Jim Calhoun. He realizes that he may not start right away.

“That’s what he needs,” said Rice head coach Mo Hicks. “Someone to get him to play with as much intensity as possible.”

Paul Brown of Kelly’s AAU team, the Gauchos, agreed.

“Calhoun is an old-school coach with old-school values,” Brown said. “He’s going to do the same things for Curtis as he did with guys like [Charlie] Villanueva.”

Kelly, who committed to UConn about 15 minutes before ex-Husky Villanueva was drafted seventh by Toronto, seems ready to embrace life under Calhoun and in the Big East, where he will join Edgar Sosa, his Raider and Gaucho teammate who’s bound for Louisville.

“I’ve played some of my best games when Mo screams at me,” said the Bronx native, the second city player to commit to UConn in recent weeks, joining Christ the King’s Tina Charles. “Coach Calhoun is going to get the best out of me. He can develop me into an NBA player.”

While the NBA’s new prohibition on high-schoolers going directly to the pros made his decision for him, Kelly said he didn’t think going straight to the NBA was a realistic option.

“I need to go to college,” Kelly said. “I don’t know if it’s for one, two or three years. We’ll see what happens, but it is a weight off my back that I don’t have to think about it anymore.”