He might be the best basketball player in Kentucky. Major colleges are taking notice.
It was far from a normal high school season for Kaleb Glenn, a standout from Louisville and one of the most celebrated basketball recruits in Kentucky in quite some time.
Glenn and the Male Bulldogs came into the 2020-21 season with high hopes. They were coming off a stellar 2019-20 showing, a team that would have been the favorites to win the Sweet Sixteen if the state tournament had actually been played.
Instead, it was wiped out due to COVID-19, one of the first major sporting events in the state to be canceled as a result of the pandemic.
Male entered this past season as the No. 1-ranked team in the commonwealth. Glenn, just a sophomore, was voted by coaches as the state’s No. 3 overall player (behind seniors Zion Harmon and Ben Johnson). More bad luck followed.
High school teams from Louisville weren’t permitted to start their seasons until Feb. 2 — about a month later than the rest of the state — and once Male’s season actually did start, it lasted only a couple of weeks.
Following a 31-point victory over Seneca on Feb. 19, the Bulldogs were shut down for a month due to COVID-19. They couldn’t play. They couldn’t practice. They didn’t hit the court again until the district tournament, and they ended up losing in the 7th Region semifinals. All told, they played seven regular-season games, just 11 games total.
“So we really didn’t get a season,” Male Coach Tim Haworth told the Herald-Leader this week. “But I saw improvements in his game. And then this summer — we were able to play 28 games — and I was like, ‘Man, he has improved.’ He’s really comfortable being out on the floor. He’s shooting the three ball at a very high rate. He’s handling the ball, passing it to open teammates. He’s just really taken his game to another level.”
Glenn — a 6-foot-7, 220-pound forward — is proving himself to be the star that Haworth and others thought he’d be from a young age, and he’s doing it despite the basketball hardships of the past year and a half.
Major college programs are taking notice.
On June 15 — the first day that college coaches were able to directly contact recruits from the 2023 class — Glenn received scholarship offers from Louisville, Indiana, Texas A&M, South Carolina, Wake Forest and Arizona State. He already had previous offers from West Virginia, Cincinnati and Iowa State, among others.
As a freshman, he averaged a double-double for Male, and MaxPreps.com named him a second-team freshman All-American nationally. 247Sports ranks him as the No. 44 prospect in the 2023 class (that’s higher, for now, than Reed Sheppard, the other Kentuckian getting a ton of early attention).
“He’s just very strong,” 247Sports analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader. “You see him, and he’s very mature physically for his age. He has a strong, chiseled frame. He’s a really good athlete. And when his motor is running fully, he’s really impactful as a defender and as a rebounder and as a transition rim-runner. He is capable of playing the ‘3,’ but I do like him in that small-ball ‘4’ role where he can take bigs out to the perimeter and just take them off the bounce. And he can defend multiple positions. With his strength and his athleticism, he can be a really good rebounder.”
Glenn is working to become more of a “3” man, the position he played the most for Male this past season and in the team’s summer games. He’s comfortable with the ball in his hands. He can make moves going either way off the bounce and finish with either hand. He’s an aware passer and an unselfish player. And he’s emerging as a major shooting threat.
After taking just eight three-pointers in 35 games — and making four — as a freshman, Glenn went 12-for-26 (46.1 percent) from deep in 11 games as a sophomore. Haworth estimated that he shot four or five threes per game this summer, continuing to hit at a high rate.
“He’s a really good shooter, and that just opens up the whole game for him,” his coach said. “He’s a worker. He works on his ball handling and shooting every day. He understands that’s what is going to allow him to be very good at the next level, and then, hopefully, even the next level beyond that.”
Recruiting Kaleb Glenn
The Louisville star has been busy in June, with the NCAA lifting its dead period on the first of the month, once again allowing high school recruits to take visits to college campuses.
Glenn has already taken unofficial visits to U of L, Indiana and West Virginia, with Haworth accompanying him and his parents on each of those trips. The Male coach said all three trips were great, and all three of those schools have made Glenn a major priority early on.
Elsewhere in recruiting circles, a narrative is already forming.
“I think, at the end of the day, it’s going to be a local race,” Branham said. “And if I had to handicap it now, I’d say Louisville has a really good chance at landing Kaleb, just given the strong ties he has to the program, and obviously being from Louisville.
“I think he’s going to stay close to home.”
Glenn’s father, Vic, was a wide receiver for the U of L football team in the early ’00s, and Coach Chris Mack has already gone all in on the legacy recruitment.
U of L has now hosted Glenn for two unofficial visits. Mack watched him play at a major showcase in Shelbyville this month — the first time in more than a year that college coaches could see recruits in person — and the Cards had at least one coach in the stands for each of Glenn’s games there.
Louisville also hosted an on-campus team camp that included Male players last week. It’s a safe bet that the program’s coaches will once again be watching when Glenn plays with his Brad Beal Elite squad on the Nike circuit in July.
Kentucky has also been in contact.
Haworth said UK had reached out to express interest in Glenn’s recruitment. The Male coach also noted that he stays in regular contact with Chris Woolard, UK’s associate athletic director for basketball operations who was an assistant coach at Murray State when Haworth played there. He’s sure the Wildcats will continue to keep tabs on Glenn’s progress.
Haworth also said he doesn’t envision any kind of quick decision from Glenn, who still has two more years of high school in front of him. A Louisville insider for the 247Sports network has already logged a Crystal Ball prediction in favor of the Cards for Glenn.
His coach says there’s still a way to go in this recruitment.
“I would say, there is no favorite,” Haworth said. “And just because he’s in their backyard doesn’t mean they’re the favorite. I really think Kaleb is open to everybody, and he’s going to pick the school, the staff that he feels like he connects with the most and is family to him.
“The most important thing to Kaleb is those relationships and who’s going to get him to where he needs to get to.”
