Top 10 recruit didn’t wait for Kentucky offer. Why that’s not necessarily a big deal.
The commitment of five-star basketball prospect Peyton Watson to UCLA on Monday night was less a recruiting loss for Kentucky and more an example of what could have been in a normal year.
Watson — a 6-foot-7 wing player from Long Beach, Calif. — is ranked by 247Sports as the No. 8 overall recruit in the class of 2021 and just a few months ago looked the part of a possible major UK recruiting target for next season.
In a typical cycle, the Wildcats’ coaches would have made a point to see Watson play early in the April evaluation periods. Instead, with concerns over the spread of COVID-19 shutting down all in-person recruiting this spring and summer, Watson went unwatched by John Calipari and his assistant coaches.
Kenny Payne kept tabs on the top-10 recruit via long-distance conversations with Watson and his family, but no UK scholarship offer was ever extended, and the California native — an established priority in Pac-12 country — moved ahead with his UCLA commitment, picking the Bruins over Arizona, Oregon and other (mostly West Coast) programs.
The announcement wasn’t unexpected, and — even if this had been a normal recruiting cycle with full access for college coaches — it’s certainly possible that Watson would have still ended up at UCLA.
But the circumstances surrounding his recruitment are a perfect example of how this abnormal recruiting calendar is affecting Kentucky’s roster-building efforts.
Watson grew up watching the Wildcats on the West Coast and has called them a dream school. His standing in the national recruiting rankings would suggest he’s good enough to play for Calipari, and his team-first background seemed a perfect fit for the UK coach’s philosophy when targeting prospective recruits.
Earlier this month, Rivals.com national analyst Eric Bossi chose Watson as one of the 2021 recruits who could have been a major focus for new recruiting suitors if AAU games had been played as normal this summer.
Just last week, Rivals.com national analyst Corey Evans ranked UK fifth in Watson’s recruitment, noting that the Cats hadn’t extended an offer yet but could become a primary contender for his commitment if Calipari took that next step.
“Watson is not going to wait around forever, so chances are he will move on from the Wildcats and wrap up his recruitment if an offer is not extended in the coming weeks,” Evans wrote. “If Kentucky goes all in, however, it may be hard to beat.”
Watson could have been a major part of Kentucky’s basketball future, but these last few weeks of his recruitment are yet another sign that Calipari likely won’t be straying from his well-established process for targeting and prioritizing recruits.
The UK coach has made it clear in recent years that — no matter how talented a high school player might be — he wants to see that player play in person, spend some quality time with him and his family, and, ideally, get them on campus so all involved can get a true feel for what being a Kentucky basketball player is all about.
In the current environment, all of that is obviously impossible.
This might, however, be an ideal recruiting cycle for UK’s coaches to be met with such a hurdle.
What’s next for Kentucky?
Watson won’t be playing for the Wildcats, but — if all goes according to plan — UK won’t be lacking talent for the 2021-22 season, and landing star players in this recruiting window will still be a big reason for that.
So far, Calipari has extended only four scholarship offers to players currently in the 2021 class: point guard Kennedy Chandler, shooting guard Jaden Hardy, small forward Patrick Baldwin Jr. and power forward Paolo Banchero. He’s also extended offers to two 2022 recruits — forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield and combo guard Skyy Clark — and both of those prospects are possibilities to reclassify to 2021. (In fact, Evans told the Herald-Leader this month he expects both players to make the move to 2021).
As it stands now, UK is favored to land Banchero, Hardy, Clark and Huntley-Hatfield, who are all likely top-15 national recruits. The Cats won’t be counting their commitments before they’re announced, but such a scenario would take a ton or pressure off UK’s staff for the 2021 cycle, and it could mean no more scholarship offers at all for the next few months.
It’s important to note that the scholarship offer for Clark, who grew up in California and recently moved to Nashville, broke with Calipari’s process. The UK coach still hasn’t seen him play in person, but he and his assistants have spent ample time with Clark and his family — both in California and on a recruiting trip to Lexington in February — and Joel Justus has seen him in the gym. They’ve identified Clark as an ideal fit for UK’s basketball culture, and his recent film shows how far he’s come in just a few months, building on a perimeter skill set that was already among the best in the country.
Clark is likely to be an exception when it comes to UK scholarship offers, and he’s still the only player to receive one since COVID-19 shut down in-person recruiting more than four months ago.
The reason for the lack of urgency is that Kentucky appears — even with zero 2021 commitments — to be in a pretty enviable spot. If the Cats can land some combination of Banchero, Hardy, Clark and Huntley-Hatfield, that group would be joining a program that expects to return more players than normal.
Only two of UK’s incoming freshmen — Brandon Boston and Terrence Clarke — are projected as NBA Draft picks after this season. That leaves sophomore Keion Brooks, transfer Jacob Toppin, and freshmen Dontaie Allen, Devin Askew, Cam’Ron Fletcher, Isaiah Jackson and Lance Ware as possible returnees for the 2021-22 season. It’s unlikely all seven of those players come back — outplaying current projections, going pro despite being a surefire draft pick, and transfers have become common to Kentucky basketball — but the thinking around the program is that several from that group will return.
If four or five of those players come back — and three or four of UK’s top recruiting targets commit — the Cats would be looking at 7-9 scholarship players for the 2021-22 campaign. That’s a realistic, perhaps even conservative, projection.
Calipari would want a couple of other players in such a scenario, and the Herald-Leader has been told that — if the current NCAA recruiting travel ban continues, which is the expectation — it could be more likely for the Cats to go the transfer route than to take a chance on a talented high school player they’re not incredibly familiar with.
By the end of this coming season — if there is a season — Calipari and his staff will have a much better feel for what type of player they need to target to fill out the 2021-22 roster. They’ve proven over the past few years that transfers, particularly graduate transfers, might be the best way to complement their always young lineups. Reid Travis and Nate Sestina played big roles over the past two seasons. Olivier Sarr, if he’s eligible, and Davion Mintz are expected to be key players this winter.
That strategy could pay off even more in 2021, when the NCAA is expected to finally pass its “free transfer” provision that would allow underclassmen to switch schools and play immediately if they’re in good academic standing.
If a school like Kentucky appears to have a need at a position, it will get the attention of the most talented players in the transfer portal (and might even convince some who otherwise would stay put to reach out and make the jump to UK).
It might seem like Calipari and his program are sitting still with recruiting as other top schools send out scholarship offers sight unseen, but UK’s relatively narrow focus on the 2021 class is just one aspect of a larger plan for the future.
And while Peyton Watson might have ultimately been a Kentucky basketball star if 2020 hadn’t turned out so strange, the Cats’ roster should still boast plenty of talent by this time next year.
