Roster for top basketball recruiting event includes zero players from UK’s No. 1 class
The selections for this year’s Nike Hoop Summit basketball all-star game were posted Thursday, and none of the six players in Kentucky’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class made the USA team.
The omission of UK’s signees was not a major surprise, given that the USA team is usually comprised of players with extensive and continuous USA Basketball backgrounds. Only one of Kentucky’s six signees (Devin Askew) attended the most recent USA Basketball minicamp in Colorado Springs in October.
This will, however, be the first time that Kentucky will not have a signee at the Nike Hoop Summit since John Calipari took over the Wildcats’ program in 2009. Tyrese Maxey represented the USA last year, continuing a streak of 11 years with at least one UK recruit in the showcase. The only previous year in the Calipari era with zero Kentucky recruits on the USA team was 2014, when two future Wildcats with international ties (Trey Lyles and Karl-Anthony Towns) were chosen for the World Select Team.
Oklahoma State signee Cade Cunningham, who visited Kentucky for Big Blue Madness on the weekend of the USA camp in October, was among the very few selections who missed that camp and still made the Hoop Summit squad. Cunningham is also the No. 1 overall player in the 2020 class and won a FIBA gold medal as a key player with the USA Basketball U19 squad last year.
All five of the other high school players on that U19 team were selected for the Hoop Summit game: Scottie Barnes (Florida State), Jalen Green (uncommitted), Evan Mobley (Southern Cal), Jalen Suggs (Gonzaga) and Ziaire Williams (uncommitted).
The other six players to make the Nike Hoop Summit USA team were Josh Christopher (uncommitted), Walker Kessler (North Carolina), Caleb Love (North Carolina), Adam Miller (Illinois), Jeremy Roach (Duke) and Day’Ron Sharpe (North Carolina).
Selections for the World Select team, which will compete against the Americans in the all-star game, will be announced at a later date.
The Nike Hoop Summit will be played April 10 in Portland, Ore.
UK signees Brandon Boston and Terrence Clarke were selected for this year’s McDonald’s All-American Game. The Jordan Brand Classic rosters for 2020 have not yet been released.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 4:30 PM.
