Resetting Kentucky’s basketball recruiting board entering July. Who can the Cats get?
This past month was an incredibly busy one in the world of basketball recruiting, with June 1 marking the end of the NCAA-mandated “dead period” and a reopening of college campuses for visiting prospects and high school gyms for college coaches.
The coming month might be even more hectic.
Though college coaches were permitted two evaluation weekends to scout players with their high school teams in June, it’ll be July when things really open back up and resemble the relative normal of past recruiting cycles.
Starting next week, there will be three evaluation periods totaling 10 days for coaches to see their top recruiting targets play with their grassroots basketball teams. The level of competition will be the highest of the summer, with nationally ranked prospects pitted against each other on the Nike, Adidas and Under Armour circuits, as well as other competitive events.
It’ll be the first time coaches can see players with their shoe company-affiliated squads in two years and the best evaluation opportunity since the NCAA shut down recruiting travel in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
College coaches have a lot of catching up to do, and Kentucky’s staff will have their eyes on dozens of top prospects from the 2022 class and beyond.
UK hosted a half-dozen rising seniors — including early commitment Skyy Clark — for official visits to Lexington in June, and those players will be at the top of the watch list in July as the Wildcats position themselves in each recruitment.
Here’s the latest on the top 2022 targets on Kentucky’s list — starting with the players that have already visited Lexington this summer — and a look at who might be the most likely to join Clark at UK for the 2022-23 season.
Jalen Duren
Though he’s technically still part of the 2022 class, all indications are that Duren — a 6-foot-10 center from Philadelphia — plans to reclassify to 2021 and play college basketball this coming season. The college route has seemingly overtaken the preps-to-pros path as the most likely scenario in Duren’s recruitment, and — if he does indeed reclassify — he would challenge Gonzaga signee Chet Holmgren for the No. 1 ranking in the 2021 class.
Duren arrived in Lexington for his official visit Monday, an all-important opportunity for John Calipari and the UK coaching staff to sell him on the idea of playing for the Wildcats before heading to the 2022 NBA Draft, where he’s an early favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick.
Kentucky’s main competition in this recruitment will be Memphis and Miami. Recent changes to the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rules — allowing players to make money while still in school — should help Kentucky in this three-team race, but Duren took official visits to all three campuses in June, and it’s too early to handicap a true leader in his recruitment. The pro route, too, remains a lucrative option.
But the Wildcats are certainly in the mix, and his addition would vault UK to legitimate national title contender in the upcoming season. Don’t expect an announcement anytime soon. Duren will play with his Nike-affiliated Team Final program this month, and it’s unlikely any final resolution to his recruitment will come before then.
Chris Livingston
The No. 4 overall recruit in the 2022 class, Livingston — a 6-6 wing from Akron, Ohio — visited Lexington a couple of weeks ago, and the feedback since that trip has indicated that UK will be among the very top college options on his list. Key word: college. There’s still quite a bit of buzz out there in favor of Livingston to the pros, and that will be something to watch for until the dynamic prospect actually unpacks his bags on a college campus. Memphis has been seen as the top school on his college list, but, like pretty much everyone who visited UK in June, the NIL possibilities for a player the caliber of Livingston would seem to be higher in Lexington than any other college basketball market.
With Duren likely headed to the 2021 class, No. 2 recruit Emoni Bates likely headed to the pros, and No. 3 recruit Amari Bailey already committed to UCLA, it could leave Livingston as the top-ranked available prospect from 2022 who could actually end up in college. Still, with the pro route expected to be hanging over his recruitment for the next year, don’t expect any finality to the situation anytime soon.
Brandon Miller
The No. 10 player in the Rivals.com rankings was in Lexington for his official visit this past weekend, and he emerged relatively early in this recruiting cycle as one of Kentucky’s primary targets for the 2022-23 season. Miller — a 6-8 forward from the Nashville area — is already accomplished on the court, but he has considerable upside as a mismatch nightmare who can stretch the floor for a player of his size. UK made even more gains in his recruitment with the recent visit, and the Cats are expected to be in this one until the very end of the process.
Miller also visited Auburn, Tennessee and Alabama — where his father played college football — in June. Along with the next two players on this list, Miller is a 2022 prospect that Kentucky appears to be in an especially great spot with going into July.
Shaedon Sharpe
One of the biggest risers in high school basketball over the past year or so, Sharpe went from outside the top 100 of the 247Sports composite rankings going into his junior season to top-10 national prospect heading into his final summer on the grassroots circuit.
The 6-4 shooting guard from Ontario has ridiculous athleticism, but his skill game — outside shooting, especially — is starting to match that on the court. He plays for the same Nike program that produced Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and the experience that former Wildcat had in Lexington has led to a mutual respect between Calipari and Sharpe’s basketball inner circle, so much so that Sharpe’s coach actually called Kentucky to make sure they could get in on the recruitment during the early stages.
247Sports bumped Sharpe from No. 38 to No. 8 nationally in this week’s rankings update, and he’s the type of off-ball guard that Calipari looks for — but doesn’t always find — in every recruiting cycle. UK was able to land Sharpe for his first official visit last month, and more good news for the Wildcats could be coming in the future.
Dereck Lively II
If Sharpe is among the top risers in recruiting circles over the past year, Lively — a 7-footer from Pennsylvania — might be the No. 1 player on that list. More evidence of that came Wednesday, when 247Sports moved him from the No. 42 spot in its 2022 rankings to No. 3 overall, behind only the longstanding top two of Jalen Duren and Emoni Bates.
Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina have all come through with scholarship offers over the past few months, and UK and UNC hosted Lively for official visits earlier in June, with Duke doing the same earlier this week. Calipari stayed busy with his current team and a slew of official visits during the two evaluation periods in June, but he did make a point to travel to New Jersey to see Lively play with his high school team last week.
The mobile, versatile post player still has incredibly high upside, and he’s clearly become one of the top blue-blood targets in the country. Lively has already been compared to former UK standout Willie Cauley-Stein — with perhaps more length and offensive readiness than Cauley-Stein possessed — and Kentucky looks to be at or near the top of Lively’s list following the June visits.
Keyonte George
George is on this list because he was originally expected to visit UK in June — and he’s long been one of the Wildcats’ top 2022 targets — but the 6-4 shooting guard didn’t make it to Lexington this past month. George did take official visits to the campuses of each of his other four finalists: Texas, Baylor, Kansas and Oklahoma State. All four of those schools are easier trips than Lexington for the standout from Lewisville, Texas — especially during this busy summer of basketball — but it’s still not the greatest sign for the Cats.
Though Kentucky is still expected to host George for an official visit sometime soon, it’s becoming ever more clear that Texas is the team to beat in this recruitment, and it might be too late for any other school to turn that tide. 247Sports and Rivals.com both rank George as the No. 5 overall player in the 2022 class.
Others to watch
The previously mentioned players aren’t the only legitimate Kentucky recruiting targets for the 2022 class heading into July. Here’s a quick look at some others on the UK radar:
▪ Jaden Bradley: The 6-2 point guard from the Charlotte area — originally from Rochester, N.Y. — was one of the first players in the 2022 class to land a UK scholarship offer. Bradley visited several other schools in June, but Kentucky was not one of them. His father told the Herald-Leader that was no slight against UK, which hosted the family for a visit before Bradley’s sophomore year, and that they were already working with the coaching staff for an official visit date in the fall. Still, one of Rivals.com’s top analysts, Jamie Shaw, made a FutureCast prediction in favor of Alabama — one of the schools that did host Bradley in June — just last weekend.
▪ Adem Bona: Ranked No. 9 on the new list from 247Sports, Bona is a hardworking, athletic post prospect who should be able to make a considerable impact as an interior defender and rebounder as a college freshman. There’s also plenty of pro buzz around Bona, who was born in Nigeria and emerged as a top amateur prospect in Turkey before making yet another move to the United States last year. If he does play college ball, expect UK to be in the mix.
▪ Sadraque Nganga: The 6-10 forward from Angola mentioned Kentucky as a “dream school” early in his American high school career, going so far as to say that he would commit to the Wildcats if they ever extended a scholarship offer. That hasn’t happened yet, but UK has been keeping tabs on Nganga’s recruitment, and he’ll be playing his final year of high school ball this coming season for the same Arizona prep team that produced Wildcats freshman TyTy Washington, so there’s a built-in relationship there if Calipari wants to pursue further.
▪ Cason Wallace: The 6-3 combo guard from Texas is a top-20 player nationally and was one of UK’s earliest 2022 targets. Baylor looked like a possible favorite earlier this year, but that talk has died down. There also hadn’t been much UK chatter around Wallace’s recruitment lately, though he did tell 247Sports last week that Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas have been the most involved lately. So that’s worth watching. Wallace is a defensive stopper on the perimeter and would seemingly fit well with Calipari’s approach.
▪ Zion Cruz: A 6-5 combo guard from New Jersey and the No. 18 player in the new 247Sports rankings, Cruz is another player who hasn’t been linked strongly to Kentucky in recent months but is still clearly interested in the Wildcats’ program. He told ZagsBlog in June that he “really wants an offer” from UK and hopes the Cats’ coaches see him at Peach Jam a couple weeks from now. Auburn hosted him for an official visit at the beginning of June, and Bruce Pearl’s program has made Cruz a major priority in the 2022 class.
▪ Vince Iwuchukwu: The 7-footer will team up with UK commitment Skyy Clark at Montverde (Fla.) Academy this coming season, and Kentucky — along with North Carolina, Baylor, Gonzaga and many others — is expected to be interested in his recruitment. Iwuchukwu was a standout player at the recent Pangos All-American Camp, showing off a more advanced offensive game after being painted as a defensive post specialist earlier in his high school career.
▪ Nick Smith Jr.: The No. 20 player in the new 247Sports rankings, Smith is a super-scoring, 6-4 guard from Arkansas who also has some playmaking abilities and has continued to list Kentucky among his top college options. His recruitment has been tough to track, with a shifting list of schools. He took official visits in June to Kansas, Georgetown, Auburn and Alabama.
▪ Anthony Black: A huge riser in the latest 247Sports rankings — from No. 85 to No. 16 nationally — Black has had quite the summer already, with new scholarship offers from Duke and Memphis in the past week alone. The 6-7 combo guard from Texas was also a high-major football recruit as a wide receiver, but he has a brighter future on the basketball court. Kentucky assistant coach Jai Lucas reached out recently, and UK is expected to get a close look at him this month. Black has already taken official visits to Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Texas.
