Five questions for the future of Kentucky basketball as an uncertain offseason begins
Selection Sunday has come and gone. Obviously, Kentucky’s name was not called.
A few days after John Calipari’s Cats ended a disappointing season with a first-day exit from the Southeastern Conference Tournament — and a 9-16 overall record — the reality of an uncertain spring and summer is settling in.
It’ll be a long wait until November, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this the most consequential offseason in Calipari’s tenure as Kentucky’s coach.
It has been six years since the Cats reached the Final Four, and next season will mark a decade since Calipari won his only national championship. There’s plenty of angst flowing through the Kentucky fan base, and what happens in the coming weeks and months could have a tremendous impact on the direction of the UK program and its current coach.
By the fall, the following five questions should all be answered.
Who will return to Kentucky?
This is obviously the biggest question in what is sure to be a wild offseason for Kentucky basketball, and there are several individual questions to be found here that could seemingly go either way, so let’s rephrase it.
How many players does UK need to return for next season?
A few years ago it was unthinkable, but Calipari is losing his hold over “Big Blue Nation,” and the constant roster churn is at the top of the list of reasons why. Calipari’s revolving door of talent was largely accepted when the Cats were winning big — and don’t forget that even those Final Four teams had high-profile returnees — but the past few years have taken a major toll on a fan base that prides itself on the tradition of its program.
Freshman point guard Devin Askew is expected to return next season, though UK has not yet officially announced it.
That would be a start.
Kentucky did officially announce Saturday that freshman forward Cam’Ron Fletcher had entered the NCAA transfer portal.
That was to be expected.
There are five other scholarship players from this team that fit on the spectrum of likely to possible returnees: Dontaie Allen, Keion Brooks, Davion Mintz, Jacob Toppin and Lance Ware. (Feel free to throw in Brandon Boston, if you’d like to believe the “he could be back” hype. Do so at your own risk.)
For continuity’s sake, Calipari simply has to return a sizable chunk of that group. The grind — and uneven results — of coaching an almost-entirely new team of players every season is showing. More guys who know what they’re doing from the beginning would surely be a plus for Calipari, and players who actually return for two or more seasons is clearly what a large number of Kentucky fans would like to see.
In the past three years, no UK team has returned more than four scholarship players (who actually played) from the previous season. Brooks was the only such player on this team.
It’s reasonable for Kentucky fans to expect — and Calipari should want — at least four scholarship players back from this squad. Preferably, more.
Getting freshmen like Askew and Allen and Ware to return provides a foundation this program sorely lacks, as well as a precedent future Wildcats could follow. Ditto for someone like Brooks, who could make a major statement by returning for a third year and blossoming into a better college player and legitimate pro prospect.
If it’s another mass exodus — and three or fewer of this season’s players come back — it’ll be a major missed opportunity for this program to finally get some much-needed continuity.
Several returnees should alleviate some of the fan sourness surrounding the program. This time around, the alternative just won’t do.
What will Justin Powell do?
This question extends to the entire transfer pool, because this is a route the Cats are expected to take this offseason, and it’ll be a surprise if they don’t bring in anyone from another college.
But Powell is the hot name right now, so let’s start with him.
This guy seems to check every box in UK’s search for more backcourt help.
He’s a knockdown three-point shooter, hitting at 44 percent at Auburn this past season (carrying that reputation over from high school). He’s already proven himself at the high-major college level, so, unlike recruits, expectations shouldn’t be an unknown to start next season. He has the versatility to play on or off the ball. And he has enough upside that ESPN is already projecting him as a first-round NBA Draft pick. ESPN has also ranked him as the No. 2 transfer (so far) for next season, behind only Oscar Tshiebwe, who has already signed with UK.
Powell’s status as a Kentucky native — he played for both Louisville Trinity and North Oldham in high school — only sweetens the deal for UK fans always on the lookout for hometown favorites.
Seems like a no-brainer for the Cats, right? Well, let’s see if Calipari gets it done.
Going into the weekend, Kentucky was viewed in college basketball circles as the most likely destination for Powell, but he has said that he’ll take his time with the process and plans to talk with additional schools before making a decision. For what it’s worth, the Herald-Leader was told over the weekend that Virginia — not Louisville — should be seen as UK’s top competition right now.
If Calipari gets Powell, that will be one more instant-impact player for next season. It would also undoubtedly play well in UK fan circles. If Powell goes elsewhere and thrives next season, it won’t be a great look for the Cats.
Will UK add any more recruits?
Kentucky has signed three high school players for next season. If that number stands, it would be Calipari’s smallest class in 13 recruiting cycles as UK’s head coach. Obviously, that could be welcome news to many fans if Kentucky actually returns enough current players to offset that number. If several Wildcats leave, Calipari will have to get new players from somewhere.
The high school ranks don’t appear to be a likely source.
Five-star guards Jaden Hardy, Trevor Keels and Hunter Sallis all have UK scholarship offers, but the Cats aren’t seen as leaders for any of them. That honor would go to the G League, Villanova and Gonzaga, respectively.
UK has also been in contact with four-star shooting guard Brandin Podziemski, but the sharp-shooting Wisconsin Mr. Basketball doesn’t appear to be a priority target for the Cats.
Kentucky also reached out to possible five-star point guard Tyty Washington after he announced his decommitment from Creighton last week, but it’s too early to tell if UK will be a serious option. The Herald-Leader was told over the weekend that other schools appear to be more likely.
Other than that — unless more decommitments happen — there don’t appear to be any natural fits for Kentucky in the 2021 class. There also hasn’t been much buzz around UK and any possible reclassifications from the 2022 class. That includes five-star point guard and early Kentucky commitment Skyy Clark, who seems likely to stick in the ’22 class after flirting with reclassification over the past year.
Maybe Washington becomes a serious target. Maybe a currently committed five-star player reopens his recruitment due to coaching change or some other circumstance. Maybe there is a late reclassification that piques Kentucky’s interest.
Anything can happen in recruiting, but, as of now, it looks like UK might be done with high school additions for next season.
Will we get a somewhat normal offseason?
What happens in the spring, summer and fall has a major impact on college basketball winters, and we’ve yet to see the long-term effects that the COVID-19 pandemic will have on rosters of the future.
College coaches have not been allowed to go on the road to recruit — whether that be watching players play in person or simply meeting with them and their families — since last March, and the NCAA’s “dead period” that has been in place for the past year won’t expire until the end of May, at the earliest.
Coaches are hoping to get back out on the recruiting trail then. They have a lot of missed time to make up.
Players in the class of 2021 completely missed out on their last summer of camp and AAU ball, which — like it or not — is the crucial period for college recruiters to finalize their lists and zero in on the prospects they want for the following season.
At least those players got some exposure during the previous high school and AAU seasons.
Players in the 2022 class are in a worse spot. The last time college coaches were permitted to see them in person, they were still high school sophomores. 1) College coaches’ own seasons make it more difficult to travel to high school games than AAU events; and 2) If college coaches can get on the road for a high school game, they’re typically watching seniors, not sophomores.
So, for the most part, these 2022 recruits haven’t really been seen by the schools recruiting them. And college coaches haven’t had the chance to evaluate these prospects up close, or meet with them and their families.
For this group, it will be crucial for some kind of recruiting period to be permitted this summer. June has recently become a time for coaches to see kids play organized ball with their high school teams. July is the pivotal month on the recruiting calendar. And campus visits, which also haven’t been allowed since last March, typically follow those two months.
If coaches can’t get back on the road this summer, it’ll make filling out next year’s recruiting class that much more difficult, especially for a program like Kentucky, which is meticulous in its process and prefers to build close relationships before even extending a scholarship offer.
If coaches are kept on the recruiting sidelines, it’s going to be a challenge to get a sense for the players in this 2022 class. It could also mean much more travel during the 2021-22 season, which obviously would take time and focus away from the current UK team.
Will John Calipari make any changes?
His recruiting approach has been criticized. So has his roster construction. His offensive approach was described by one prominent NBA analyst as “archaic” earlier this season. Ouch.
Yes, there has been plenty of regular-season success in recent years, but Calipari’s Cats have been doing their growing in front of everyone, and the basketball has often been ugly — especially in November and December — even if the final results have been fine.
Kentucky is going on a seventh season without a Final Four and a 10th without a national title, and those are the only things worthy of a banner in Rupp Arena, where the groans had been getting a little louder and the stands a little emptier even before this 9-16 season with its limited attendance policies.
So, does Calipari shake things up? Or does he write this past season off as a fluke, a result of COVID-19 and the disruptions that came with it?
Now would be a perfect time for a change, a fresh start, a reboot of sorts to the Calipari era.
Perhaps, once this season is a little further in the rearview mirror, Kentucky’s coach will see some of the flaws in his program that weren’t present back when he was taking the Cats to the Final Four pretty much every season. Back when he was getting the can’t-miss, instant-impact recruits that are now going elsewhere.
From what we’ve seen publicly and heard behind the scenes, it doesn’t sound like that will be the case. Calipari has repeatedly talked about the unique repercussions that COVID-19 brought to this team — and he’s not wrong there — but that overlooks some serious flaws in the way this past roster and other recent ones have been built. Too many post players and not enough guards. Too many guards and not enough post players. Plenty of length and athleticism, but not enough shooting or offensive versatility.
Calipari, who is responsible for putting these rosters together, has had to figure out how to play through a few different head-scratching combinations over the past few seasons. And he’s had to do it without a John Wall or an Anthony Davis or a Brandon Knight or a whole “platoon” full of future pros. (And never forget that Wall had Patrick Patterson; Davis had Darius Miller and Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb; Knight had Miller and DeAndre Liggins and Josh Harrellson; and that platoon featured some five-star sophomores and Willie Cauley-Stein).
As Kentucky’s coaches get a fresh look at this 2022 class and start building better relationships with those prospects, perhaps they’ll find some players who can play right away but also wouldn’t mind sticking around for a little while. Perhaps they’ll even present such a path as part of their pitch: “One and done is great, but it isn’t for everyone, even if you come to Kentucky.” Perhaps length on the perimeter can be sacrificed, to a degree, for shooting ability beyond it.
We’ll see.
Barring the unexpected, Kentucky will start next season right where it started every other one under Calipari: ranked in the Top 25 with major expectations at the national level. Obviously, it’ll be what they do once the balls start bouncing that truly matters.
And what happens over the next few months will have ramifications not only on this next season, but beyond, well into the future of this program. Will there be noticeable changes or more of the same? Let’s see what Calipari has in mind.
