Kentucky is still looking for its first 2026 basketball recruit. Who will it be?
Summer basketball practice is in full swing, but the attention of Kentucky’s coaching staff will be pointed elsewhere over the next several days.
That’s because this is one of the busiest times of year on the high school recruiting trail.
The month of July has traditionally been the big one in grassroots basketball circles, and this year features two “evaluation periods” — when college coaches can watch potential recruits play in person — on the calendar.
The first of those two eval periods actually started Thursday and will run through Sunday, with a second Thursday-Sunday session set for the coming week. That means Mark Pope and his assistant coaches — along with every other coaching staff in the country — will be zipping around in search of their next major acquisitions.
Nike is holding its final EYBL session this weekend before next week’s Peach Jam, long viewed as the premier summer event for grassroots basketball. Both of those showcases will take place in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Meanwhile, the Adidas circuit is spending this weekend in nearby Rock Hill, South Carolina — coaches will bounce back and forth between that event and the Nike EYBL session — before heading to California for next week’s evaluation period.
These two weeks will also feature events sponsored by Under Armour and Puma, as well as several major independently run showcases all around the country.
Suffice to say, it’s a busy time out on the trail.
And college coaches will find an unsettled recruiting landscape at this stage of the summer.
According to the 247Sports rankings for the 2026 class, only one top-20 player is off the board. John Calipari scored that early recruiting victory, keeping Little Rock native JJ Andrews — a 6-foot-6 wing, ranked No. 13 nationally — home as the first addition to Arkansas’ 2026 class.
Everyone else at the top of the rankings is still open. And Pope is still looking for his first major out-of-state high school recruit as Kentucky’s coach.
Pope pulled two five-star-caliber players last year, landing Jasper Johnson and Malachi Moreno for the 2025-26 roster. Both could be future stars, but both are from central Kentucky, renewing questions over how Pope will fare with the type of top-10ish talent Calipari brought to Lexington on a regular basis over the previous 15 years.
Strangely enough — for a state that hasn’t often produced national high school stars — there are two more Kentucky natives at the top of the 2026 rankings, and UK is in on both of them.
Pope will also have several other opportunities to make a splash with five-star targets from outside of the commonwealth.
Typically, by this point in the summer, it’s pretty clear where many of the nation’s top prospects are leaning. That’s not the case with the 2026 class, which carries a degree of uncertainty that could become the norm in future cycles.
With college coaches now fully invested in the transfer portal during the spring — and that avenue utilized as more of a get-better-quick option for major programs — high school recruits have had to wait their turn in the process.
Throw in the wild-card nature of NIL possibilities — and the questions surrounding how schools will approach revenue sharing as they build their rosters — and the practice of trying to figure out which recruits are headed where is more difficult than ever.
“This class has been really tough to gauge, because of all the moving parts,” 247Sports national analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader. “It’s really hard to gauge who’s in super deep (with whom), because so much is moving. A lot of these schools that you’ve seen already get kids on official visits, and quote, unquote, are ‘in deep with’ already — their recruitments are changing fast.”
Case in point, Jason Crowe Jr., a five-star guard who some other recruiting sites had been billing as a Kentucky lean until very recently. Over the past few days, Missouri has emerged as the clear leader for Crowe, who 247Sports ranks as the No. 5 player in the 2026 class.
Crowe is expected to announce his decision July 18, and Branham put in a Crystal Ball prediction in favor of Mizzou this week.
“He wasn’t expected to make a decision until the fall, but things took a surprise twist and majorly sped up — as is becoming so normal now,” he said.
And these next few days should set some more high-profile recruitments in motion.
Kentucky’s top basketball recruits
At the top of everyone’s 2026 basketball recruiting rankings is Tyran Stokes, who plays his high school ball in California but just happens to be a Louisville native.
Stokes — a versatile 6-foot-7 player — has spent this summer on the Nike circuit and was also teammates with Jasper Johnson on the USA Basketball U19 team that won a FIBA gold medal last weekend.
One of Branham’s 247Sports colleagues, fellow national analyst Adam Finkelstein, recently described Stokes as a “jumbo initiator” — a player built like a power forward with the skills of a lead guard.
“Stokes’ combination of size, power, athleticism, and playmaking ability is unmatched,” he said, reaffirming the player’s standing as the No. 1 player in the 2026 class last month.
He appears to have a pretty strong grasp on that spot in the rankings.
“Obviously, Tyran Stokes is a major priority for them,” Branham said of UK’s interest. “And they’ve been courtside for Tyran’s games all spring and summer long, but his recruitment is expected to continue to drag out. And with this new NIL landscape, things change so fast, where you don’t really have a great idea as to where things will go, because you see so many misdirections. Where it’s headed one way and it just flips on a dime for a different team.”
While that sort of thing could happen with a lot of players in the 2026 class as this summer wraps up, Branham said Stokes’ process is expected to keep dragging out into the early signing period in November.
So far, Stokes has taken official visits to three schools: Kentucky, Kansas and Louisville, most recently showing up on UK’s campus last month.
The other Kentuckian near the top of the 2026 rankings is Tay Kinney, a 6-1 guard from Newport who sits at No. 11 nationally on the 247Sports list. Like Stokes, Kinney plays his prep ball outside the state, competing at Atlanta-based Overtime Elite.
Kinney, who was one of Jasper Johnson’s teammates last season at Overtime Elite, took an official visit to Lexington last month.
“They’re trying really hard on Tay Kinney, but I don’t necessarily like their chances with Tay Kinney. I think Louisville is very much in the driver’s seat of that one, and that’s going to be a tough one to kind of flip at the end of the day,” Branham said.
Kinney, it should be noted, already has a partnership deal with Adidas and is one of the top stars in that shoe company’s grassroots league. Overtime Elite also has a multiyear deal with Adidas, which counts U of L among its biggest basketball schools.
He could be a major addition for Pat Kelsey’s program.
Other Mark Pope recruiting targets
Kentucky is involved with several other major players in the 2026 class.
Ohio wing Anthony Thompson — a visitor for Pope’s first Big Blue Madness last fall — has long been a UK target and still has the Cats on his list. But it’s a long list. Fifteen schools, in fact.
Thompson also has deep Adidas ties — like Kinney, he plays on that circuit and already has an NIL partnership with the shoe company — and that’s going to be difficult for Kentucky to overcome. (Adidas powers Kansas and Louisville are among others in contention.)
Branham said he could see UK getting through the next cut to Thompson’s list, but he didn’t sound all that optimistic regarding the Cats’ chances to land his commitment.
They might have a better shot with another Adidas recruit.
“I would anticipate that Kentucky is going to make a really strong push at Deron Rippey. He is one that they’ve been monitoring and watching for the entire spring and summer, and he’s the next top guard on the board,” Branham said.
Rippey — a 6-2 point guard from New Jersey and the No. 17 player in the class — landed a UK scholarship offer last month. He’s expected to take an official visit to Lexington in the near future.
The Nike circuit — where Kentucky is one of the biggest brands — is filled with UK targets.
Among those players, Branham specifically mentioned three major players.
“They’re going to shoot their shot, it appears, with Jordan Smith,” he said.
Smith — a 6-2 guard from Fairfax, Virginia — is No. 2 in the 247Sports rankings. He took an official visit to Duke last fall and is arguably the Blue Devils’ top target in this cycle.
Branham also expects Kentucky to keep monitoring Christian Collins, a 6-8 power forward from California and the No. 4 overall recruit in the class. Pope visited with Collins in the spring, and he has no shortage of high-major offers.
Qayden Samuels — a 6-5 wing from the Washington, D.C. area — is also one to watch.
“It appears they’re making him a priority,” Branham said. “He’s still early in the recruiting process. He’s been a Top 25 recruit for a long time, but his recruitment is just now starting to take off and hit that blue-blood status.”
Samuels is No. 18 in the 247Sports rankings and added scholarship offers from Kentucky and North Carolina to his list last month.
There are several others on UK’s 2026 recruiting radar. Some already have offers from the Cats. Some don’t. But these next several days should provide some clarity on which direction Pope and his staff will ultimately go with this class.
“At this point I don’t feel comfortable labeling them — or hardly anyone — as leaders in a recruitment this far out in this era, with a select few exceptions like Tay Kinney,” Branham said. “Things are just way too fluid, and often it becomes presumptuous. I also think Kentucky is still getting a feel for their board, and we will have a much better idea as to who their priorities are in two weeks.”
