Kentucky’s coaches reflect on epic recruiting class. ‘It’s like a powder keg.’
There was an expectation of a return to recruiting superiority when John Calipari shook up his coaching staff over the summer and signaled a new beginning of sorts for Kentucky basketball.
He brought in former UK assistant Orlando Antigua and renowned recruiter Chin Coleman from Illinois, teaming them with the up-and-coming Jai Lucas and veteran presence Bruiser Flint to form an all-star coaching staff, both in the gym and on the recruiting trail.
Expectations in sports, especially in college recruiting, are often unrealistic and overblown.
In their first few months together, however, this UK coaching staff has lived up to the hype.
On Wednesday, the Wildcats officially welcomed four new signees — point guard Skyy Clark, combo guard Cason Wallace, shooting guard Shaedon Sharpe and wing Chris Livingston — to the UK basketball program.
Before Sharpe’s announcement Tuesday that he would leave high school early and enroll at UK this winter — joining the current team in a few weeks as a practice player for the remainder of the season — the Cats’ 2022 class was ranked No. 1 nationally. The recruiting websites have started to reclassify Sharpe to 2021, but the fact remains that Kentucky’s quartet of freshmen for the 2022-23 season will be elite, even by the standards of the five-star-talent-rich Calipari era.
Just six months since this coaching staff was formed — and with some recruiting restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic still in effect at that time — the Cats have managed to land the best recruiting haul in the country for next season.
Should that be a surprise?
“No, I wasn’t surprised at all,” Coleman matter-of-factly told the Herald-Leader. “I think that our staff works really hard, and we have some great coaches on our staff. Coach Lucas is unbelievable. Coach Bruiser is unbelievable. Coach Antigua is obviously big time. And you throw myself in the mix there with those guys, we all work really hard to put our nose to the grindstone. And, so, we were challenged. We were challenged to do a better job — to do a good job for Coach Calipari.
“They’ve always been able to recruit good players. So we had to retap — it’s like a powder keg, right? Let’s just retap the fire and light it again. And that’s what we were able to do — just relight the oven and get out here on the grind and work. And we were able to do that. And we have some really good players that believe in us and believe in Coach Calipari and what he’s done. ... Our job was just to relight the keg. And now it’s back on fire, and we’re ready to roll.”
Before Sharpe was shuffled into the 2021 rankings, the Wildcats’ class consisted of the No. 1 recruit in the country (Sharpe), the No. 6 recruit (Livingston), the No. 7 recruit (Wallace) and the No. 17 recruit (Clark).
As Coleman noted, Kentucky has always recruited great players under Calipari — even the past few years, when the Cats regularly contended for the No. 1 class ranking — but this group was more of a throwback to those early days of the Coach Cal era, when seemingly every top-10 prospect had UK on his list, and the program landed more than its fair share by the end.
There’s not one, overarching reason for Kentucky’s ridiculous success in this recruiting cycle. But it’s clear that this new coaching staff is firing on all cylinders right out of the gate, and the good fortunes of the past few months should extend well into the future.
Lucas, who forms the main UK recruiting corps with Antigua and Coleman, also gave a “not really” response when asked if he was surprised by how quickly things came together for this staff.
“Recruiting has never been a problem here,” he said. “You have an easy thing to sell, with the fan base, with the university, and how people care about the basketball team. And then you have a Hall of Fame head coach who’s done almost everything in basketball. So, when you have that to use at your disposal, it’s kind of hard not to be able to at least compete at a high level to get recruits and get who you want.”
Kentucky’s 2022 class
UK’s new coaching staff deserves a lot of the credit for how things ended up, but it wasn’t all instant recruiting magic that brought this group of players together.
The Wildcats had plenty of things going in their favor long before the staff shakeup.
Clark, of course, was already committed to the Cats, announcing his pledge to Kentucky in October of last year following a dogged early pursuit by former UK assistant coach Joel Justus. There was some re-recruiting that needed to be done when Justus left for Arizona State in the offseason, but Kentucky’s staff quickly reassured Clark and his family, and the five-star point guard was the first to officially sign with UK on Wednesday morning.
Sharpe, who committed to Kentucky in September, was also seen as a major Kentucky lean well before the new coaching staff was put in place.
The Canadian guard had ties to UK through his Nike league program director and basketball mentor, Dwayne Washington, who also guided Shai Gilgeous-Alexander through his amateur career and trusted Calipari explicitly as a result of that process. Washington actually reached out to UK — not the other way around — to initiate the Cats’ interest in Sharpe, who wasn’t even a consensus top-100 recruit at the time the recruitment began.
“Kentucky got in early — before he blew up into being one of those top-10 guys,” said 247Sports analyst Travis Branham. “There was strong mutual interest. Sharpe wanted to be a Wildcat. It was essentially going to Kentucky or going pro.”
Wallace committed to Kentucky just a few days ago, but he’d been considered a UK lean for months, and the infatuation with the Wildcats was there long before Calipari even extended a scholarship offer.
The Texas combo guard expressed interest in UK more than a year ago, and Lucas — formerly an assistant coach with the Texas Longhorns — was already familiar with him when he came to Lexington last summer. The Cats kept tabs on him. Wallace blew up into one of the best guards in the class. And it all worked out.
“It was known last summer that Kentucky was Cason Wallace’s dream school,” Branham said. “And Jai Lucas obviously was there with the ability to get on the inside and get it done, if Cason Wallace continued to prove himself as a top guy, which he did.”
Livingston — a 6-7 wing from Akron, Ohio — was the surprise.
For much of his recruitment, it was assumed by most in recruiting circles that he would ultimately bypass college altogether and start a pro career right out of high school. A dynamic player with the ability to rise to the No. 1 spot in the 2022 class, Livingston could have made close to seven figures by going the pro route. Instead, with name, image and likeness reforms allowing college players to make money while still in school, he committed to Kentucky and is likely to cash in big time while playing for the Wildcats next season.
“The one that kind of surprised me was Chris Livingston,” Branham said. “The changing dynamics of the whole recruiting landscape, with the passage of NIL. Everybody thought that he was going to go pro, but obviously that changed.”
Coleman was instrumental in helping the Wildcats land Livingston, who also took an official visit to Kansas and was strongly linked to Memphis before siding with Kentucky.
Obviously, just because the stars were aligned for UK coming into this recruiting cycle didn’t make it a cakewalk for the Cats’ coaches. There was a lot of reassuring and re-recruiting that had to be done when the new staff came together, and — as UK fans have seen in the recent past — early “dream school” declarations and Crystal Ball favoritism don’t always lead to commitments.
“This is one that — from the get-go — just fell very favorably into Kentucky’s hands,” Branham said. “And Kentucky has done a really good job of capitalizing on it.”
Looking ahead to 2023
Landing what is essentially the No. 1 recruiting class for 2022 is clearly a coup for the Cats.
What makes it even better is that this group came together so relatively quickly that Kentucky’s coaches were able to start moving on to the class of 2023, which appears to be loaded with talent at the top of the rankings. Instead of traveling the country this fall — the first time in 18 months that coaches were allowed on the road, due to previous COVID-19 restrictions — in search of recruits for next season, Calipari and his staff were able to spend ample time with prospects from the junior class.
First off, the simple act of watching games and meeting with recruits and their families in person was a welcome change after a year and a half of Zoom calls and film study. Lucas called the face-to-face interactions on the recruiting trail this fall “exciting” and “refreshing.”
For Lucas, even though he’s been at Kentucky since last year, it was his first opportunity to go out on the trail as a representative of the UK coaching staff. Asked if he noticed a change in the way he was received, Lucas grinned and let out an emphatic “Yeaaah.”
“It’s definitely a difference,” he said. “Just the tradition of the program, the history of the program, and everything Coach Cal has built since he’s been here — it’s very well respected throughout the country. And that’s very noticeable when you come in wearing those colors.”
The top recruits in the class of 2023 are noticing Kentucky.
Amazingly, the Wildcats have already hosted each of the top five players in the junior class — according to the 247Sports composite rankings — for official visits this fall: No. 1 recruit DJ Wagner, No. 2 recruit Kwame Evans Jr., No. 3 recruit Mackenzie Mgbako, No. 4 recruit Mookie Cook and No. 5 recruit JJ Taylor.
Getting the top five players in the same class on campus at any point in a recruiting cycle is rare. Doing so this early in the process is practically unheard of.
“The recruiting market and the challenge of recruiting is changing,” Coleman said. “And it’s always changing. So, I think you have to be able to be a step ahead of it. At the same time, you have to be able to flow with the current — not against the current. You flow against the current, you’re going to find yourself behind, and you’re going to find yourself battling the current and drowning. So, we’re trying to get ahead of it, in terms of bringing in some of the top young guys, and putting ourselves out there a little bit more than normal.”
Kentucky has also hosted point guard Robert Dillingham (No. 8 in 2023) for an official visit and in-state legacy recruit Reed Sheppard (No. 22 in 2023) for two unofficial visits this fall.
In talking to the coaches that comprise Kentucky’s recruiting attack, it’s clear everyone is on the same page. Rather than certain coaches having certain targets — and leaving colleagues largely out of the loop in those recruitments — the UK staff has shown a team approach to gathering talent.
They’re also clearly paying attention to who will fit at UK and who might not.
In the first few years of the Calipari era, it wasn’t uncommon for the Cats to pass on a star recruit — even a top-10 player — if the staff decided such a player wouldn’t be a great match for the program.
Antigua noted how well this current UK team has been getting along, and he said finding the right chemistry is something coaches are mindful of as they meet with recruits and their families.
“It’s a very big factor in the recruiting process,” said Antigua. “The way AAU is now, with social media, the kids are all interconnected. They know each other. So it’s important to know those kinds of dynamics, in terms of who really connects with one another, who has a prior relationship. Or if there’s anything out there that maybe we need to know — maybe there’s some tension between camps or kids — that could determine if we’ll recruit a particular kid or not.”
For the 2022 class, it appears Kentucky has found the right mix.
Clark is an affable point guard who seems to make friends wherever he goes. Livingston is a versatile player who has made it clear he wants to challenge himself and play with winners. Wallace could be one of the most unselfish five-star prospects in the country, a do-anything type that coaches and teammates love.
Sharpe, the No. 1 recruit in the country, could have gone somewhere else and been the undisputed star. Instead, he came to UK knowing full well that he’d likely be teammates with these three five-star perimeter players.
“Shaedon likes playing with good players,” Washington, his mentor, told the Herald-Leader. “And because he knows these guys, he believes in them. It makes it easier.”
One class done and another begun, Kentucky’s coaches can now turn their full attention to 2023, knowing they’re already in a good place.
“We got a head start,” Coleman said. “And once we finish this class, we’re already off and running with the next class. Things are going in the right direction.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
