Why didn’t Kentucky recruit a sure-thing center for next season? It wasn’t that simple.
The next few weeks — perhaps, months — will be filled with uncertainty as Kentucky attempts to get its newest transfer, 7-footer Olivier Sarr, eligible to play next season.
UK will first prepare Sarr’s case for a transfer waiver and then send it off to the NCAA for review. If Sarr is granted immediate eligibility — which is certainly no sure thing — the Cats will have found a perfect fit in the paint for their 2020-21 roster. If Sarr is denied, UK could still file an appeal or submit any new information in his case for further review. That would only prolong the outcome by several more weeks.
Bottom line: get Sarr eligible, and the Cats will have a true impact player at the “5” spot who would cause positive ripple effects throughout the rest of the roster. If he’s not eligible, UK has a major hole in the frontcourt with few, if any, legitimate options to fill it.
Why, then — knowing Nick Richards, EJ Montgomery and Nate Sestina would all probably be gone after this past season — didn’t John Calipari just go out and recruit a sure-thing center from the 2020 class? At pretty much every other school in the country, that would sound like an outlandish expectation. For Calipari and Kentucky, it would simply be par for the course. But in this 2020 cycle, even Calipari had few options at the center position.
Post players are often a bit slower to transition from high school to college, and a look at the recently finalized 247Sports rankings for the class of 2020 shows a dearth of instant-impact bigs at the top. And Calipari had little to no shot to land the very best prospects in that group.
The only recruit in the top 15 of the 247Sports rankings that could be considered a true post player is Evan Mobley, the No. 3 prospect in the rankings. Mobley would have been a tremendous addition for any program, but his destination was basically decided two years ago when his father was hired as an assistant coach at Southern Cal. He, of course, will play for USC next season.
Former UK targets Scottie Barnes and Greg Brown — Nos. 8 and 10 in the 247Sports rankings, respectively — are listed as power forwards, but both players prefer a more perimeter-oriented role. Barnes — a 6-8 prospect — told the Herald-Leader numerous times in the past that he would like to play more of a “point forward” role in college. Brown — a 6-9 recruit — was also looking for a place where he could play on the perimeter and even handle the ball. Both are great prospects, but neither player’s outlook would have solved UK’s need for more bodies in the paint. (It’s also worth noting that Barnes and Brown both stayed with home-state schools: Florida State and Texas, respectively).
The 12 other players in the final top 15 of the 247Sports rankings are listed as guards or small forwards. That’s not to say there aren’t college difference-makers a little further down that list.
2020 post players
247Sports national analyst Evan Daniels pointed out in an interview with the Herald-Leader that the rankings are set with players’ long-term prospects in mind. The 247Sports list isn’t about who will be the best college players. It’s about who projects as the best players five or 10 years down the line. With the way the NBA is currently played, that approach to the rankings can often hurt post recruits.
“From a philosophy standpoint, I’m not ranking centers as high unless they fit modern NBA centers — run-and-jump guys that are athletes and can protect the rim and catch lobs,” Daniels said.
He specifically mentioned 7-footer Mark Williams (No. 16 in the rankings) and 6-10, 250-pound big man Day’Ron Sharpe (No. 20) as fitting the mold of players who — while there might be some question about their long-term upside — could dominate the paint as college freshmen.
Sharpe is a perfect example. He looks every bit the part of a formidable college center. At last fall’s highly competitive USA Basketball camp in Colorado Springs, he was a force. ESPN had multiple draft analysts at that event. Yet, in ESPN’s (very early) NBA mock draft for next year, Sharpe is nowhere to be found. Nor is Williams. Nor is any center from the 2020 class other than Mobley, who is projected as the NBA’s No. 3 pick a year from now. The fact that he’s the only 2020 post player listed in a mock draft with 60 total picks — and coming from a 2020 group that Daniels says “crushes last year’s class” on the whole — is telling of the lack of high-impact post players in the class. It’s also an indication of the way the game — and its future stars — is moving away from the traditional “5” man.
Landing Williams or Sharpe would have also been incredibly difficult for Kentucky.
Williams — from Norfolk, Va. — was on UK’s radar, but his older sister, Elizabeth Williams, is one of the greatest players in Duke women’s basketball history and already has her number retired by the program. That family tie was surely an edge for Duke, a program that needs no further advantage when recruiting the best of the best.
Sharpe, a North Carolina native, grew up rooting for the Tar Heels, and Coach Roy Williams extended a scholarship offer when Sharpe was still a sophomore in high school. He committed to UNC before his junior year. No one else stood a chance.
Kentucky did take a look at some graduate transfers — sure things to be eligible next season — but that search was also unfruitful. Purdue big man Matt Haarms was originally the top target, but he ended up signing with BYU, a much better fit for a player who wanted to be more active away from the basket. UK also inquired about Virginia Commonwealth post player Marcus Santos-Silva, but it was decided that the Wildcats wouldn’t be a good match. Santos-Silva ended up at Texas Tech.
Those were considered the top two big men in a grad transfer group heavy on guards and wings.
Kentucky’s frontcourt recruits
Other than Mobley, Williams and Sharpe, the only real post player in the top 20 of the 2020 rankings is versatile 6-11 center Makur Maker, who finished at No. 17 but is eligible for this year’s NBA Draft.
If Maker chooses to play college basketball instead of staying in the draft — where he’s currently ranked just outside the top 60 by ESPN — Kentucky would have a shot. UK is one of four schools that Maker’s guardian, Ed Smith, gave the Herald-Leader as top options — the others being Auburn, Oregon and UCLA — and CBS Sports college basketball reporter Jon Rothstein tweeted Sunday that UK and UCLA might be the favorites, if Maker goes the college route.
That’s a big if. Maker and his camp clearly prefer the idea of staying in the draft, and Smith told the Herald-Leader that if he’s a projected first-round pick or gets an attractive second-round guarantee from an NBA franchise, he’ll stay in the draft. Questions also remain about Maker’s academic status with the NCAA for next season, with many in recruiting circles skeptical that he would be ruled eligible to play. The most likely path forward for Maker still appears to be a professional one.
Walker Kessler — a 7-footer from Georgia — fell 12 spots in the final 247Sports rankings to No. 25 overall. He is also committed to North Carolina. UK scouted Kessler and had him on campus for a visit, but the Wildcats never extended a scholarship offer, and his game is dissimilar from the more athletic style that Calipari’s past frontcourt stars have played.
Former UK power forward target Isaiah Todd is ranked No. 27 overall, but he’s headed to the G League for next season. The Kentucky coaching staff identified that possibility early in the recruitment and moved on to other targets.
Marquette signee Dawson Garcia finished at No. 29. Garcia is a 6-11 and listed as a power forward, though he likes to play facing the basket. Kentucky scouted him closely but never extended an offer.
Only three other post players made the final top 40 from 247Sports: Isaiah Jackson (No. 31), Mady Sissoko (No. 39), and Lance Ware (No. 40). Two of those players — Jackson and Ware — will play for Kentucky next season. (Sissoko signed with Michigan State). Longtime UK target Cliff Omoruyi dropped 12 spots to No. 55 in the final 247Sports rankings. He ended up at home-state Rutgers, and it’s not certain he could have shouldered the load at the “5” in year one at a place like Kentucky.
So, of the true post players in the class of 2020, the Cats actually ended up with two of the best, even if they aren’t ranked quite as high as some other UK frontcourt recruits of the past.
The 2019 class, by contrast, had about 15 players who could be considered true post players in the final top 40 of the rankings, with relatively more of those positioned at the top. James Wiseman (No. 1), Isaiah Stewart (No. 4) and Vernon Carey (No. 6) were all elite recruits, with instant-impact players like Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Oscar Tshiebwe toward the back of the top 25.
Calipari took a lot of flak for missing out on any impact big men in that class. Some of it was justified. There’s nothing much UK could have done to land Wiseman, whose high school and travel coach, Penny Hardaway, was hired as Memphis’ head coach. Same goes for Tshiebwe and No. 15-ranked N’Faly Dante, who went to West Virginia and Oregon, respectively — schools that had previous ties to their inner circles — after being seriously pursued by Kentucky.
But things could have gone differently with Carey, who had UK among his top schools but didn’t take to Calipari’s pitch, and Stewart, who might have come to Kentucky had the Cats made him a priority earlier in the process.
Ultimately, those misses didn’t much matter. Nick Richards blossomed to become one of college basketball’s best big men (as well as one of the most feel-good stories of the Calipari era).
A similar scenario could unfold in the next Kentucky season, if Sarr is eligible.
But if Sarr doesn’t get his transfer waiver — and the Cats can’t get lucky and find someone else to fill the paint — Jackson and Ware would be left as the only true post players on the 2020-21 roster. That would surely lead to some hand-wringing and second-guessing, with fans questioning Calipari’s approach to this recruiting cycle.
That kind of criticism at this stage last year would have been warranted. This time around, there’s seemingly not a whole lot more Kentucky could have done.
