Olivier Sarr, UK’s next commitment, and more basketball recruiting questions (and answers)
With the calendar now turned to August, things in the world of Kentucky basketball recruiting remain largely unchanged.
There’s still no word from the NCAA on whether star transfer Olivier Sarr will be able to play for the Wildcats this season. UK still has zero commitments for the current 2021 cycle. And college coaches are still not permitted to travel to recruiting events or host prospective targets for campus visits.
What should Kentucky fans expect moving forward? Here are five big questions (and answers) related to UK basketball recruiting as these uncertain times drag on.
What’s the deal with Olivier Sarr?
The biggest question regarding Kentucky basketball remains unanswered.
Sarr — a 7-footer from France — announced his transfer from Wake Forest to Kentucky on May 6, his transfer waiver request was submitted to the NCAA a few weeks later, and the wait continues. The typical turnaround time for such requests is three weeks. It’s now been more than two months without an answer.
An NCAA spokeswoman told the Herald-Leader earlier this year that — while the three-week turnaround time is the normal range — “every case is different and decided based on the facts presented.” The NCAA does not comment on specific cases, and even the coaches involved remain in the dark until a ruling is handed down. Calipari did tell reporters last month that UK feels “confident” and that Sarr has a “great case” for immediate eligibility. The general thinking around the program seems to be that he will be allowed to play for UK this season, but as Calipari said: “You never know until you hear it’s good to go.”
Sarr, who would be the team’s starting center, has been on UK’s campus working out with the team for the past few weeks. His case for immediate eligibility would seem to be bolstered by other rulings the NCAA has made in favor of players in recent weeks. Cases that in past years might have been borderline decisions or uphill battles have resulted in immediate eligibility in 2020 as the NCAA has seemingly taken a more lenient approach with transfers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The drawn-out process of Sarr’s case also shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a bad sign. Just last week, Eastern Kentucky announced that West Virginia transfer Brandon Knapper had been granted immediate eligibility more than three months after he first committed to EKU.
A Sarr decision has to be coming soon, and the guess is it will be in Kentucky’s favor.
Sarr, who has just one season of college eligibility remaining, has said he would explore professional opportunities rather than sit out a year if the NCAA denies his waiver request. He would have until Aug. 17 to enter his name in this year’s NBA Draft.
Who will be the next recruit to land a UK scholarship offer?
Since the NCAA put a stop to in-person recruiting back in March, only one high school player has received a Kentucky offer. That was 2022 combo guard Skyy Clark, who the Wildcats’ coaching staff was already incredibly familiar with before the current recruiting shutdown.
Only four players in the 2021 class have UK offers: Patrick Baldwin Jr., Paolo Banchero, Kennedy Chandler and Jaden Hardy. (Along with Clark and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield in the 2022 class). That 2021 number is incredibly small, relative to past recruiting cycles, but John Calipari hasn’t made any overt moves to expand the target list in recent months.
UK passed on offering top-10 recruit Peyton Watson, who had called Kentucky a dream school growing up but committed to UCLA last week. Five-star center Efton Reid and four-star forward Trey Kaufman have also been mentioned as possible UK offer recipients in the past, but there has been little movement in Reid’s recruitment, and Kaufman now appears unlikely to land a Kentucky offer.
The Herald-Leader was told last week that UK is currently monitoring at least a couple of other 2021 recruits not previously thought to be targets, but the most likely player to receive a Kentucky offer seems to be someone outside of that class.
Five-star point guard Jaden Bradley checks a lot of the same boxes as Clark at this stage in his recruitment. Bradley, like Clark, has been a major UK target for more than a year. Like Clark, he has already been to UK for a campus visit. Like Clark, he comes from a great family that clicked right away with the Kentucky coaching staff. And, like Clark, he’s unquestionably talented enough to play for the Wildcats.
It seems to be a matter of when — not if — Bradley lands that UK scholarship offer.
Who will be UK’s first commitment for the 2021 class?
By Aug. 4 of last year, Kentucky already had commitments from Brandon Boston Jr. and Cam’Ron Fletcher.
At the same stage in this recruiting cycle, the Cats have zero commitments, and none of the four players with UK offers for next season seem to be on the verge of a decision in Kentucky’s favor.
Chandler is likely headed to Tennessee. The Cats aren’t perceived as leaders for Baldwin. Kentucky appears to be in a good spot for both Banchero and Hardy, but neither is a UK lock, and neither has given any hints that they’re nearing a decision. (And Hardy still hasn’t visited Lexington). Huntley-Hatfield, who is ultimately expected to move to the 2021 class, is also seen as a possible Kentucky lean, but his recruitment is far from decided.
That leaves Clark, and Kentucky remains in a very good spot with him.
The UK scholarship offer for Clark — a 6-foot-3 combo guard who recently moved from Los Angeles to Nashville — was seen as a formality, but it was also a necessary next step in his recruitment. He and his father haven’t been shy about their positive feelings regarding UK’s program, and — at this point — it would be a major surprise if Clark ends up at another college.
He’s also taking the necessary credits this coming school year to be able to reclassify to 2021 and play college basketball next season. If the NCAA’s ban on in-person recruiting activities gets extended again — and Clark can’t take visits to some of the other schools on his list for several more months — it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him go ahead and announce a pledge to Kentucky.
Side note: Clark is currently ranked No. 16 overall in the 2022 class by Rivals.com. Expect him to be several spots higher than that in the next round of rankings updates.
When will coaches be permitted to recruit in person?
The NCAA announced in late June that it was extending its ban on recruiting travels for college coaches — and on-campus visits for prospective recruits — through the end of August due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. There have been some fairly high-profile recruiting showcases in the weeks since, but coaches have been relegated to watching those events through video streams. That’s not the optimal way to scout potential targets.
College coaches — and others in recruiting circles — are preparing for the NCAA’s ban on in-person recruiting to eventually be extended through the end of the calendar year. Such announcements might come on a monthly basis, but it’s sounding unlikely that college coaches will be back on the recruiting trail in 2020. If that ban is extended, Jan. 1 also seems like an unlikely restart date for in-person recruiting activities. By that point, the hope is that the college basketball season will be underway, and — unless there is a major, positive change with the coronavirus pandemic — it seems unlikely that the NCAA would want coaches to be traveling for any reason other than away games. That line of thinking could extend to having prospective recruits on college campuses.
Bottom line: this current recruiting shutdown could last well into next year.
At what point does no recruiting travel become a problem for Kentucky?
In the short term, much of that depends on what happens with recruits like Banchero and Hardy, who should both be in the conversation for No. 1 player in the 2021 cycle and could be the foundation of UK’s signing class.
If the Cats can land those two prospects, along with a reclassified Clark and Huntley-Hatfield, the rest of their 2021-22 roster could be filled out with returning players and possibly a transfer or two. That’s the best-case scenario for Kentucky, and it’s not an unrealistic one.
It’s also not a foolproof plan. Banchero could stay home and play for Washington, or follow close friend Kennedy Chandler to Tennessee. Hardy could go the G League route, follow in his older brother’s footsteps and head to Oregon, or pick one of the other schools on his list.
If either recruitment went another direction, UK would be in a bit of a scramble mode, forced to rely even more heavily on transfers or take a chance on a high school player that the program isn’t as familiar with. Time will tell.
The long term could be more of an issue.
Kentucky’s coaches like to watch potential targets early in their high school careers, when possible, and chart how they improve over time to gauge whether they’re cut out for the Wildcats’ program. Those types of recruitments also allow the UK coaches to get to know the player and his family even better over the course of several visits and conversations. (This is even more important now with the G League becoming a real option for top prospects, who could choose that route even if they’re already committed to a college).
While everything could turn out fine in the 2021 cycle, the UK coaching staff will be missing out on valuable evaluation time for the recruits in the 2022 class (and beyond). If the NCAA’s recruiting ban continues for several more months, Calipari and his staff will have a much shorter window — and smaller sample size of games and in-person meetings — to judge those 2022 recruits. That could make next summer even more uncertain than this one for UK’s recruiting efforts. And it will make landing a familiar player like Jaden Bradley — and/or Skyy Clark, if he stays in 2022 — even more important as Kentucky build’s its next class.
