Kentucky basketball mailbag: What is UK’s recruiting outlook? (Any shooters coming?)
We asked for your questions on the Kentucky basketball team this week, and you didn’t disappoint.
There have been lots of good ones to choose from. The first part of this mailbag series was posted Wednesday and focused on John Calipari’s job performance and future as UK’s head coach. This installment will focus on the Wildcats’ recruiting efforts and outlook for next season.
Devin Askew, Dontaie Allen, Cam’Ron Fletcher, Jacob Toppin, Lance Ware, Oscar Tshiebwe, Skyy Clark, Bryce Hopkins, Nolan Hickman, Daimion Collins. Is that the 10 guys next year?
Kentucky’s basketball offseasons are notorious for their unpredictability, making it incredibly difficult to correctly guess the 2021-22 roster at this stage on the calendar, but this group of 10 is as good a jumping off point as any.
(We’ll assume that Olivier Sarr and Davion Mintz won’t use their NCAA-granted extra season of eligibility. And we’ll also assume, for now, that Brandon Boston, Terrence Clarke and Isaiah Jackson — still seen as possible first-round picks, much to the confusion of some fans — go pro).
Collins, Hickman and Hopkins are all signed for next season. They’ll be here. Tshiebwe transferred last week in order to play for the Cats next season. He’ll be here. Toppin transferred last year with the intention of sitting out this season altogether. He’s made a noticeable impact on this team. He should be back. Askew and Ware came to UK projected as multi-year players and have been given opportunities early on. They should be back.
If Allen had stayed on the bench, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see him look elsewhere after this season, but he’s emerged as one of this team’s most important players and a seemingly integral part of the program’s immediate future. Surely he’ll return.
Fletcher’s brief but public departure from the team raises eyebrows about his future. But it’s important to note that, if he wanted to leave, he could’ve transferred out at the semester break. Calipari hasn’t played him since his return to the team, and it sounds like that’s part of a plan that both sides agreed to. At this point, it’s best to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s back. (And he could be a big part of Kentucky’s future).
The situation with Clark is a little more tricky. He’s committed to the Cats, but he’s still in the 2022 class. He and his family have been honest about their openness to reclassification, but it sounds like he’s still on the fence. No decision is expected until the spring. Given the candidness of the reclassification talk, maybe that move to 2021 is most likely. But a decision either way shouldn’t come as a surprise.
That would be 10 scholarship players, leaving three open scholarships. John Calipari rarely uses all 13, but you’d also expect him to start the season with more than 10. So, who else is on the team?
▪ Keion Brooks is an interesting case. On one hand, he isn’t on any reputable NBA Draft boards. On the other hand, it’s quite rare for a former five-star recruit to stay at UK for more than two seasons. This hasn’t been a normal second season, however. Both injury and COVID-19 restrictions have robbed Brooks of several months of development. He has basketball dreams beyond college, but he also doesn’t seem the type to make a shortsighted decision on his future. Maybe he’s back for a third season at Kentucky?
▪ The original 10 for this question included Askew, Hickman, Clark and Allen at the “1” and “2” spots (if you consider Allen a “2”). Surely Kentucky will add another talented player who could play one or both of those positions. By continuing to recruit accomplished high school guards like Hunter Sallis and Jaden Hardy, the UK coaching staff is signaling that they want at least one more backcourt player for next season. It doesn’t appear that they lead for either Hardy or Sallis, however. Maybe they’ll add five-star 2022 point guard Jaden Bradley, who is also open to reclassification. Maybe they’ll take a chance on Wisconsin shooting guard Brandin Podziemski, who isn’t ranked in the top 100 by Rivals.com or ESPN — and might not help much right away — but could improve through practice time and possibly provide some knockdown shooting off the bench. Maybe they look for another player in the mold of Mintz, a veteran transfer who could come in and help right away.
I’d expect UK to add at least one more guard to this incoming group, and there should be plenty of options in the spring.
Any shooters coming in next year?
Kentucky’s outside shooting has been abysmal this season. No way around it.
There’s optimism, but no guarantees, for the future.
Allen is making threes at about a 50-percent rate since breaking into the regular rotation. His return will be crucial.
Askew is making only 30 percent of his three-point shots, but he’s a better outside shooter than that, and he’s clearly still getting comfortable with all aspects of the college game. I think he’ll be a reliable outside threat as a sophomore.
Hickman should be one of Calipari’s best three-point shooting point guards in years. He projects as a player who won’t force outside shots but also won’t be afraid to pull the trigger. And he makes them at a solid rate. His ability to penetrate defenses seems like it will translate to the next level, and that should open up the floor for guys like Allen and Askew.
If Clark comes, he, too, will bring a reputation as a solid three-point shooter.
The thing with reputations is they’re only that until we see results. We haven’t quite seen it from Askew yet, and we obviously haven’t seen Clark or Hickman at all on a college court. (Case in point: None of us who watched Brandon Boston extensively as a high school player would have thought he’d be a sub-20 percent three-point shooter in college. And Boston isn’t the first UK player in recent memory to under-perform from outside, relative to expectations).
But that quartet — Allen, Askew, Clark and Hickman — would offer some pretty good potential. There’s also the possibility that someone like Fletcher or Toppin develops into an outside shooter that defenses have to keep an eye on.
Still, as mentioned earlier, I think Kentucky adds another guard to this group. And they’d obviously like for that player to be a decent-to-great three-point shooter. Brandin Podziemski would be an intriguing addition, but there’s still a long way to go in his recruitment. The transfer portal should also yield some strong possibilities, and recent history shows that Kentucky won’t hesitate to add someone from that group if the staff feels like such a player would help the roster.
How much of a lean is Hunter Sallis to Gonzaga? Is he a lock?
I don’t think he’s a “lock,” but he certainly sounds like a “lean” at this point.
Sallis — a do-it-all, 6-foot-5 point guard from Omaha — has narrowed his recruitment to eight schools, but it’s Gonzaga, Kentucky and North Carolina that seem to be getting the most buzz in recent months.
A few weeks ago, many thought UK might be the slight leader.
Now, that sentiment has largely shifted to Gonzaga, which currently features a similarly skilled freshman guard, Jalen Suggs, who will be off to the NBA Draft after this season — perhaps as the No. 1 overall pick — thus opening up an immediate opportunity for Sallis to take over.
Sallis has been watching what Suggs is doing at Gonzaga, and he has to like what he’s seeing. Gonzaga was also the only school that got to host Sallis for an official visit before COVID-19 prompted the NCAA to shut down all recruiting travel. And the Zags — ranked No. 1 this season — will be highly ranked going into next season, as well, with plenty of talent to put around Sallis (if that’s where he ends up going).
The NCAA “dead period” is currently scheduled to end in April, though it’s been extended several times over the past 10 months. If it’s extended again, it seems the most likely scenario would be Sallis committing to Gonzaga. He and his family have considered traveling to Lexington and Chapel Hill on their own dime, but even if they did so, the dead period would mean they couldn’t tour the basketball facilities or meet with any of the athletics staff (including coaches) while on campus. If UK and UNC are indeed playing catch-up with Gonzaga, and it sounds like they are, having a recruit on campus but not being able to actually “recruit” him is not the situation you want to be in.
The odds of Kentucky and North Carolina would surely improve if the dead period is lifted and official visits are permitted before Sallis is ready to make a decision. Even then, Gonzaga would be a mighty tempting destination.
Do you anticipate the social media behavior of some fans to have an adverse impact on recruiting?
I’ve been told it’s already happening.
We live in a small world, due to social media, and the basketball community is tight knit. The comments that Kentucky’s young players have had to endure — prompting some to delete social media accounts altogether — were highly publicized, and that did not go unnoticed.
Recruits — and, more importantly, their parents — pay attention to this stuff. Many of the top recruits know the top players a year or two ahead of them well, and they keep tabs on what they’re doing at their colleges, both on and off the court. So, none of this was a good look for the UK fan base, even if it was a small (but vocal) minority of the fan base engaging in such actions.
Kentucky fans are a huge positive on the recruiting trail, especially when players and their parents and coaches get to travel to Lexington for home games and major events like Big Blue Madness. That passion is palpable, and competitive players with big ambitions often want to play in those environments.
That passion also manifests itself in frustration and even anger when times are tough, as they have been this season. And that’s when the positive becomes a negative, especially in recruiting.
The result isn’t necessarily that current players will have bad things to say about their Kentucky experience to younger recruits. That’s happened with a handful of former players, but it’s rare. And it most often happens because a former UK player — rightly or wrongly — feels he wasn’t properly utilized.
The real fear, from a recruiting standpoint, is that rival recruiters will use such comments as ammunition. “Hey, you see what Kentucky’s own fans are saying about their guys? Why would you want to go and be a part of that? You come here and the fans will love you.” It’s the kind of stuff that happens all the time in recruiting, and some other schools were quick to pounce on it this time around.
Will that actually work? Will hearing about negative comments from some fans actually be a deciding factor in any one recruit’s decision? Maybe not. But it certainly doesn’t help UK’s cause. It puts Kentucky’s coaches in a spot where they have to defend their program instead of selling it.
Most importantly, it’s just not very nice.
“They’ve been on us,” Isaiah Jackson said a few weeks ago of some UK fans. “I feel them. But at the same time, we’re just young. We’re still trying to come together as a team. It’s just going to take time.”
Jackson was still 18 years old when he said that. (He turned 19 last week). Everyone associated with this team has been frustrated, with good reason, but fans tweeting negative things at 18- and 19-year-olds still trying to find their way isn’t going to accomplish a whole heck of a lot.
