He might be the nation’s No. 1 basketball recruit. Could Kentucky be the perfect fit?
Kentucky is likely to need some frontcourt help for the 2022-23 basketball season. The most highly touted uncommitted prospect in the 2022 class just happens to be a 6-foot-11 center with a skill set that should make him an instant-impact college player.
Could it be a match made in recruiting heaven?
There’s been some off-and-on buzz surrounding UK and Yohan Traore over the past few months, and talk of the Wildcats jumping further into that recruitment has heated up again in recent days.
On paper, such a match makes all kinds of sense.
UK will have arguably the best group of freshmen in the country to start next season, but it’s a class consisting entirely of recruits who prefer to play on the perimeter. Skyy Clark is a point guard, Cason Wallace is a combo guard, Shaedon Sharpe is a shooting guard, and Chris Livingston is a 6-7 wing who can make an impact near the basket but also has backcourt skills.
Kentucky had two major center targets in this class: Dereck Lively II and Adem Bona, a pair of five-star post recruits with different-but-impactful skill sets. The Cats whiffed on both this fall.
After those misses, it was presumed that UK would suspend its big man search until after this season, wait to see what Oscar Tshiebwe, Daimion Collins and Lance Ware decided to do, and then go from there, with the transfer portal and the reclassification route being the most likely options.
Traore’s name, however, is popping up as a real possibility, and UK Coach John Calipari made a trip to see him play in person over the weekend. It would be an epic addition for the Wildcats.
As of now, Rivals.com ranks Traore as the No. 4 overall player in the 2022 class. The top of those rankings will be shuffled when Sharpe — currently at No. 1 — officially enrolls in classes at Kentucky in a few weeks. Even though Sharpe plans to only practice with the Cats for the remainder of the season, his winter enrollment will send him to the 2021 class on the recruiting websites. A new No. 1 player will be needed.
Rivals.com national analyst Rob Cassidy has floated Traore as a possibility for the top spot in recent articles for the website.
“He’s all of 6-11, and he runs the floor like a much, much smaller player,” Cassidy told the Herald-Leader. “The only thing that’s kind of holding him back is his shooting. Because the upside is there. ... It would be kind of a risk to put him there, because he’s not developed from a jump-shooting standpoint. But he has every other tool to be a No. 1 player in the country. He’s almost definitely a one-and-done kid, just because of the blend of athleticism and size that you just don’t see very often.”
The new No. 1 for 2022?
Traore moved to the United States from France just last year, playing his junior season of high school at Prolific Prep (Calif.). For his senior year, he’s transferred to Dream City Christian (Ariz.) — that happens to be Sharpe’s alma mater — and Traore is off to a hot start this season.
This prep campaign follows a summer in which Traore was one of the nation’s biggest breakout stars. He finished up the grassroots circuit playing for perennial Adidas power Dream Vision, which won that league’s championship in July.
Following the summer, Traore rocketed up the 2022 rankings — moving from No. 64 to No. 4 nationally on Rivals.com’s board — and his rise could continue this winter.
“He’s a complete matchup nightmare, because he is so athletic at his size,” Cassidy said. “He’s way too athletic to guard with a center, for the most part, because they can’t stay in front of him, and he handles the ball pretty well. And if you put a smaller guy on him, he’s just going to bully him. Because he does have that size. And he gets up and down so quickly.
“If you watch him play, he’s the first one back on defense. He’s a fast guy for his size. And then he’s got the length. He can shoot it from the mid-range. He finishes almost everything at the basket. He’ll dunk everything he can.”
Once Sharpe departs the 2022 class, the only players ahead of Traore in the rankings will be UCLA guard commitment Amari Bailey, who skipped the entire AAU season this past summer, and Lively, who has already ascended to the No. 1 spot in the 247Sports rankings.
Cassidy said the debate over Rivals.com’s top spot will continue, but it sounds like Traore and Lively might be the most likely to grab the No. 1 ranking.
Lively is the more accomplished shooter — with range extending beyond the three-point line — and is probably the better shot-blocker at this stage, but Cassidy said Traore is likely better, as of now, in every other major aspect of a center’s game. (Those around Traore say he’s underrated and quickly improving as an outside shooter, it should be noted).
Cassidy also said Traore more consistently has a bigger impact on games. He’s also bigger and stronger physically — listed at 6-11 and 227 pounds — with seemingly much more room to add muscle to his frame.
“I think he’s probably the highest-floor center of all of them,” Cassidy said of Traore’s standing among 2022 post players. “I don’t see him busting. Just because of the way he impacts games right now. I think if you’re taking them as players right now — who are you going to put on the floor who’s going to impact the game right now, today? — if it’s him and Lively, I’m going to take Traore. Now, a year from now, that could change.”
Recruiting Yohan Traore
The recruiting world has realized that Traore is a top-tier talent.
No one seems to have a great handle on his actual recruitment.
“He keeps everything so close to the vest that it’s real hard to project where he’s going to land,” Cassidy said.
Traore’s list keeps changing, with established suitors all but bowing out and new programs coming in as possible major players. The professional route is an option, too, but Cassidy says the pro reps and college contacts he’s spoken to have said that even they can’t get a good read on where Traore might be leaning.
“Some of them don’t know if they’re in or out,” he said. “And the worst thing you can do as a college coaching staff is to sink a bunch of time and resources into a kid you’re not going to get. I think people are a little bit leery of that.”
Perhaps that’s part of the reason it’s taken Kentucky, which has obviously been searching for a star center, so long to be seriously linked to Traore’s recruitment. The Herald-Leader was told earlier this year that there had been some contact between the two sides, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and UK had apparently moved on. That contact is picking back up.
Clayton Williams is the director of Dream Vision, Traore’s grassroots team, and his program has produced several McDonald’s All-Americans over the past decade-plus. Dream Vision has also featured recruits such as Shabazz Muhammad and Stephen Zimmerman, who became major UK targets before opting for other schools.
Williams, who acknowledged going into the weekend that he hadn’t spoken much with Kentucky about Traore, said he always keeps in general contact with UK’s staff, even when the Cats aren’t actively recruiting one of his players. Former assistant coach Kenny Payne was previously his main contact, but Calipari also checks in periodically. “Every now and then, he tells me, ‘I recruit Dream Vision players, but you gotta tell me.’ He always tells me, ‘I got gas in the jet!’
“Kentucky and Cal — there’s a relationship there. He knows who we are. And, annually, the type of ball players (in our program).”
On one hand, it’s a bit strange that Traore isn’t already a bigger UK target. On the other hand, it makes some sense. Calipari was able to spend only one day at an Adidas event to start the first July recruiting period before flying off to see other circuits. He surely planned to check out more Adidas players later that month, but he ended up testing positive for COVID-19 relatively early in the July window and remained sidelined for the rest of the recruiting period.
Williams said he thinks Calipari was “a little bit intrigued” by Traore over the summer, but he simply didn’t get to see him play in person. There have still been some conversations with Calipari and assistant coach Orlando Antigua.
“I’ve told Coach O and Coach Cal that he’d be there for one year,” Williams said. “And that’s what they want. They were like, ‘Hey, that would be a good thing.’”
On Saturday night, the intrigue turned to action, with Calipari and UK assistant Jai Lucas making the trip to the Marshall County Hoop Fest in western Kentucky to see Traore play in person with his Dream City Christian squad.
Still a chance for Kentucky?
Williams left no room for doubt: Traore is a Kentucky-type talent. And there’s still time for the Wildcats.
Traore is one of only three players in the Rivals.com top 30 for 2022 that remain uncommitted, and he’s yet to put any type of timetable on such an announcement.
“Because he is a late-bloomer — or he’s getting to the party a little bit late — he doesn’t want to rush,” Williams said, noting that Traore was still developing his English-speaking skills. “He wants to make a decision that someone really appreciates what he does on the floor. He wants to know who that is. … Genuinely, he wants to make the right decision.”
Williams mentioned Memphis, Michigan, Texas, Kansas and pretty much all of the major Pac-12 schools as the programs that are still recruiting Traore the hardest.
There haven’t been many public predictions on Traore’s Crystal Ball and FutureCast pages, but those that have made picks have deemed Memphis the favorite. Recruiting analysts have acknowledged the Memphis buzz in recent weeks, but Penny Hardaway’s program is off to a rough start to this season — despite featuring top-five freshmen Jalen Duren and Emoni Bates — and that might be taking some of the luster off of the Tigers on the recruiting trail.
It might also leave a bigger opening for Kentucky, should the Wildcats get more involved.
“He would be really good at Kentucky,” Williams said. “Cal is hard on the guys. Very, very hard. He expects a lot, because guys want a lot. … And I just think Yohan would react to that very, very well.”
Williams said some players back down from demanding coaches. Others relish the challenge. He put Traore, who turns 19 years old in February, in the latter category. He responds well to hard coaching, Williams said, and constructive criticism won’t break him down.
“If you don’t want that kind of heat, don’t do it,” he said. “But if you want to be challenged, then yeah, step into Kentucky. And I absolutely have no doubt about it — he would respond.”
It’ll be interesting to see where this goes over the next few weeks. With at least one of UK’s big men likely departing after this season, it would be somewhat of a risk for the Cats to wait until the transfer portal opens or hope for an impact center to reclassify in the spring. It sounds like there could be interest on both sides of a UK-Traore recruitment. Surely, such a match would lead to mutually beneficial results on the court, with a Kentucky lineup already projected to feature several star guards, needing only a dependable big man to help them along.
“It would be good for his skill set, because they don’t really need him outside to stretch the floor,” Cassidy said. “They’re going to have those guys around him. They can all shoot. They can all create their own shot and can break down defenses. And if you’ve got a guy like Sharpe who can break down defenses and then you’ve got Traore in the lane to finish everything that comes near him — it’s a pretty lethal combination.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
