Kentucky bringing yet another elite basketball recruit to town for visit this weekend
The revolving door of five-star basketball recruits coming to Kentucky will keep on spinning this weekend, with one of the nation’s top-ranked prospects headed to Lexington for an official visit.
Kwame Evans Jr. — a 6-foot-9, 200-pound power forward — is scheduled to start his recruiting trip to UK on Friday, when the Wildcats will wrap up their exhibition slate in preparation for the start of the 2021-22 season next week.
Evans has long been ranked among the top prospects in the 2023 class, and he’s now listed no lower than No. 4 overall by any of the major national recruiting services, with 247Sports pegging him as the No. 2 junior in the country.
“He’s a tremendous prospect, but he’s definitely much more prospect than he is player at this stage,” 247Sports analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader. “He has tremendous size, length and athleticism for the position. He’s got ball skills. He can create off the bounce some. He can make shots on the perimeter. He’s got some vision and passing ability. But everything comes and goes in flashes. And he’s not a consistent producer, especially compared to some of the other guys at the top of this class.”
That’s not necessarily a knock on his overall game, just an assessment of where he is in relation to some other top-ranked juniors in the country. Evans still has two more seasons of high school ball in front of him before he embarks on a college career, and his current ranking — in what is shaping up to be a talented class at the top — shows just how much national analysts think about his long-term upside.
“He has a really high ceiling,” Branham said. “If he makes the proper jumps and he really hones in on his development process, he’s a kid with tremendous two-way upside. A shotmaker with some playmaking potential, and a versatile defender. Again, he has great size, length and athleticism. If he really develops, he can be one of those guys that defends all five positions. So he has a tremendous amount of potential.”
Across the skill spectrum, Evans has shown flashes of what it takes to be a potential college basketball star (and possible high-level NBA Draft pick down the road). At 6-9, he can play on the perimeter as a catch-and-shoot three-point threat while creating for others. When he’s on his game defensively, he can be as disruptive as anyone on the court.
But his production still comes and goes in every area, Branham says. There’s no one thing Evans needs to work on to take his game to the next level. With him, it will be a matter of consistently doing everything he has the potential to do.
“It’s one of those things where everything just has to click over time,” Branham said. “Everything has to continue getting better. And he has improved over the past year, as well, but there’s still a ways to go in just about every aspect.”
Evans — the son of former George Washington superstar Kwame Evans — broke into the Baltimore (Md.) Poly starting lineup as a freshman and averaged 9.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.0 blocked shots that season while playing alongside several college basketball-bound upperclassmen. His sophomore season was canceled completely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he’s still shown enough on the grassroots circuit to establish himself as one of the top players in the country.
He’ll have a better chance this season to cement his status at that level.
Evans has transferred to prep powerhouse Montverde (Fla.) Academy, the defending national champion and a program that plays one of the toughest schedules in the country. At Montverde, he’ll compete every day against teammates bound for high-major colleges, which should be a challenging atmosphere as he continues to develop his overall skill set.
“That’s a great place to go and let all of these things just kind of naturally take their course,” Branham said.
Recruiting Kwame Evans Jr.
The trip to Kentucky this weekend will mark the first official visit of Evans’ recruitment, which is still tough to read with two high school seasons remaining.
“This one is too soon,” Branham said. “And since he’s much more of a prospect, coaches are trying to gauge how he’s going to develop and see where this goes: Is he going to pan out to be a No. 2-type player in the class, or is he going to fall down to be more of a top 25 type of player?”
College coaches seem to be preparing for the scenario that he does live up to that ranking.
Evans already has scholarship offers from Auburn, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Memphis, Ohio State, Oregon, Tennessee and several others. Kentucky and Duke have both ramped up their interest in recent weeks, and Evans is expected to be in Durham for an official visit a few days after wrapping up his UK trip.
This season, he’ll be teammates with Kentucky commitment Skyy Clark and Duke commitment Dariq Whitehead, as well as other seniors already committed to Florida, Indiana and Southern Cal.
Branham said he would classify Evans as more of a “4” who can play some “3” at the next level, and he has enough versatility to mesh well with other forwards if he continues to develop.
UK has targeted several star wings and combo forwards in the 2023 class, and Branham said that Evans would make for a good match with many of those players — specifically mentioning Mookie Cook and JJ Taylor, two major Kentucky targets — as prospects that could pair well with Evans at the same time on the court.
This is the fourth consecutive weekend that Kentucky’s coaches will welcome a five-star 2023 talent to campus for an early recruiting visit. Back on Big Blue Madness weekend, UK hosted DJ Wagner — the No. 1 player in the class — along with Mackenzie Mgbako and Reed Sheppard. The next weekend, Taylor and point guard Robert Dillingham were in town. Cook came to Lexington last weekend for the first official visit of his recruitment. Now, it’s Evans’ turn.
Kentucky’s success with the 2022 recruiting class — three five-star commitments with a fourth expected this weekend from Cason Wallace — has allowed the coaching staff to get a jump on the top players in the 2023 class.
Following the offseason hires of Orlando Antigua and Chin Coleman, who joined Jai Lucas to form John Calipari’s main recruiting corps, the Wildcats are seemingly recharged on the trail. And they’ve been able to start seriously pursuing the next year’s top prospects at an earlier time than any other in recent memory.
These connections could pay off big in the long run.
“Obviously, it’s a new staff, basically. And they’re going at it a very different way,” Branham said. “So, we’ll see. But it’s very beneficial to get these kids on campus and go ahead and establish a foundational relationship to build on moving forward.”
