What’s next for Skyy Clark? Checking in on the UK basketball recruit’s future plans.
Like so many high school basketball players across the country, this season didn’t go quite exactly as planned for Skyy Clark.
The five-star point guard — an early commitment to Kentucky for the class of 2022 — moved with his family from the Los Angeles area to Nashville last April, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the United States but before it became clear it would disrupt everyday life for more than a year.
Instead of a normal transition to his new hometown, Clark saw plenty of upheaval.
After a spring and summer with virtually no team basketball activities due to the pandemic, Clark enrolled in Brentwood Academy before transferring to Ensworth School just before the start of the season.
There, for a short while, he finally settled in.
Clark set a school record with 51 points in his first game with Ensworth — that performance coming less than a month after his commitment to Kentucky — and was averaging 26.4 points per game and shooting nearly 40 percent from three-point range before his season came to a premature end.
The 6-foot-3 point guard announced Jan. 31 that he was opting out of the remainder of his junior season. The decision came after his father and two sisters tested positive for COVID-19 at different times throughout the school year, each positive test within the family leading to a quarantine period away from the basketball team for Skyy and his younger brother, ZZ, a freshman and emerging national recruit in the 2024 class.
Kenny Clark, the future Wildcat’s father, said he stayed in contact with UK assistant coach Joel Justus throughout their decision-making process, and John Calipari was kept in the loop, as well. Kentucky’s coaches were completely on board with Skyy’s choice to end his season early and the family’s decision to take more of a long-term outlook over the short-term risk of playing in relatively crowded gyms amid high COVID numbers. (Tennessee’s restrictions on attendance for high school games were set to expire Feb. 1, the day after Clark made his decision public).
So, Clark’s junior season was cut short, but he’s still developing on and off the court.
His father said Skyy and ZZ attend boxing training — a new addition to their physical development routine — every morning and then head to the gym for basketball-related skills training after that. They spend their afternoons at home and usually go back to the gym a second time at night to get in more shots and skill work.
Obviously, they’ve also been keeping an eye on how the Wildcats are doing this season.
The results — UK is 8-15 heading into the regular-season finale this weekend — have been unexpected, but the Clarks have been unfazed by Kentucky’s struggles.
“The crazy thing about that is — and this is the power of UK — all you hear about is, ‘UK, UK, UK — you’re having a bad season.’ Well, look, Duke and North Carolina aren’t having a great season either. It’s just a weird year,” Kenny Clark told the Herald-Leader. “With COVID, the guys didn’t get the chemistry in the offseason. They were basically in the gym training by themselves. You didn’t get that full offseason of training together and scrimmaging together and doing this and doing that. So I think all of those programs will be fine next year. They’ll be back to what people expect.”
In the meantime, Skyy Clark is staying positive. Both privately and publicly.
His Twitter feed in recent weeks has been peppered with the #BBN hashtag and words of encouragement for Kentucky’s fans and its current players, those messages often coming during games and even after losses.
“He’s just a positive kid,” his dad said. “He wants everybody to enjoy their experience. And he wants to let the fans know that he is all in. He’s all in with BBN. So he’s just supporting the players and supporting the program and the coaches. It’s a tough year for everybody. But they’ve never quit, you know what I’m saying. Everybody is still out there busting their tail.”
Will Skyy Clark reclassify?
Kentucky fans are still waiting to see if Clark will be part of next season’s team.
The star recruit and his family have been open and honest about the possibility that he could ultimately reclassify from 2022 to 2021 and join the Wildcats in time for next season. That transparency has led some observers to believe that Clark ultimately would make that move, but it sounds like that won’t be happening.
Kenny Clark told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday that his son is happy with the trajectory of his development and plans to stay in the 2022 class. All signs are pointing toward that conclusion, which means Clark would play one more season of high school ball before suiting up for the Wildcats in the 2022-23 season.
That might be a blow to a program that is still searching for immediate backcourt help for next season’s roster, but if Clark does indeed stick with his original class — and he doesn’t turn 18 years old until July — it would obviously give him one more year of development before he starts his college career.
Kentucky’s coaches have said they’re good with whatever Skyy decides.
“Whatever we feel is best, they’re definitely on board with it,” his dad said, adding that the decision will ultimately be his son’s to make.
What’s 100 percent certain is that Skyy Clark will be playing this spring and summer for Mokan Elite, one of the most prestigious programs on the Nike circuit and the winners of two of the last four Peach Jam championships.
The two point guards on those two title teams were Trae Young — now a budding star in the NBA — and Kennedy Chandler, one of the top point guards in the 2021 class and a Tennessee signee for next season.
Clark — the No. 12 overall player in the 2022 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings — hopes to be next in that line of success as he proves himself against the best of the best on the always competitive Nike circuit, something he didn’t get an opportunity to do last summer due to COVID-19.
So, for now, it seems Clark is content to stay put in high school a little while longer and continue to work on his game. His Kentucky basketball career will start soon enough. When it does, he wants to be ready to make an immediate impact.
“We’re going to get him ready for SEC basketball, UK basketball,” his father said. “... There’s no sense in rushing him or anything right now. Everything’s working out how he wants, and we’re just taking it day by day.”
