Top Kentucky point guard target picks Tennessee. What’s next for the Wildcats?
Kennedy Chandler, the lone point guard in the class of 2021 with a scholarship offer from the University of Kentucky, announced his commitment to the Tennessee Volunteers on Friday.
Chandler’s college choice was not unexpected. The Memphis-area native had previously cut his list to five schools — UK, Tennessee, Duke, Memphis and North Carolina — and he managed to take visits to each of his finalists before the NCAA put a halt to in-person recruiting in March due to COVID-19 concerns.
Tennessee emerged earlier this year as the favorite, and the Volunteers had 100 percent of the predictions on Chandler’s 247Sports Crystal Ball page coming into this week. The 6-foot prospect is the No. 11 overall recruit and No. 1 point guard in the 2021 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings. Rivals.com ranks Chandler as the nation’s No. 10 rising high school senior and also pegs him as the top point guard in his class.
UK Coach John Calipari watched Chandler play multiple times last season and extended a scholarship offer on Christmas Day, making him one of the only players in the 2021 class to receive the honor from UK. He visited Lexington in late February, and the Cats were thought to be in the top tier of his recruitment, though it became clear in recent months that Tennessee would be the team to beat.
Chandler was the only point guard in the 2021 class with a Kentucky scholarship offer, but the Wildcats still have options at the all-important position.
Incoming freshman Devin Askew — UK’s likely starting point guard for the 2020-21 season — is not currently projected as a one-and-done player. He turned 18 years old just a couple of weeks ago, and the expectation is that he will be with the Wildcats for at least two seasons before beginning a professional career.
UK has also started recruiting 6-foot-5 playmaker Hunter Sallis, who Rivals.com ranks as the No. 11 overall player in the 2021 class. Sallis is versatile enough to play anywhere in the backcourt, including point guard, and there is ample mutual interest between the Nebraska native and the UK coaching staff.
“The lazy comparison — but one that’s not entirely wrong — is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander,” Rivals.com national analyst Corey Evans told the Herald-Leader this week. “Just because of his size and his length due to a growth spurt, and his ball skills, and his wiggle. Hunter is definitely more athletic than Shai was. He’s more explosive, has more wiggle to his game. And he might be more of a scorer than Shai was.
“Not many have improved, if any in his class, at such a rate as Hunter Sallis. And he’s a very easygoing, fun-loving, high-character kid. And someone that I think is a no-brainer Kentucky kind of guy.”
Kentucky is also the heavy favorite for 6-3 point guard Skyy Clark, who recently moved from Los Angeles to Nashville and has not been shy about his interest in the Wildcats’ program. Clark is the only player since the COVID-related recruiting shutdown in March to land a scholarship offer from UK. He is currently in the 2022 class and has said his current plan is to stay in that group, but he will be taking the necessary courses to graduate this academic year, and it’s possible — if UK has a major need at the position by the end of the 2021 recruiting cycle — that Clark could still reclassify.
Landing Chandler at this stage in the recruiting process could help Tennessee with five-star power forward Paolo Banchero, who is arguably UK’s biggest target in the 2021 class and one of the few candidates to end up with the No. 1 overall ranking in that group.
Banchero and Chandler are close friends and have complementary games. They had even spoke publicly about the possibility of taking recruiting visits together during their senior year. Chandler will now be helping the Volunteers’ coaching staff in their recruitment of Banchero, who has narrowed his finalists to Kentucky, Tennessee, Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga and Washington, his hometown school.
There is no timetable for Banchero’s college commitment.
