These are the five most intriguing Kentucky basketball recruits going into the new year
It’s time to look ahead to the next year of college basketball recruiting, a world always rich with intriguing storylines. Nowhere is that more true than Kentucky, where John Calipari is often in the mix for the nation’s top high school players amid an annual effort to shape an ever-changing roster to meet never-ending national championship expectations.
UK rolls into the new year with a 2022 signing class filled with five-star recruits for next season, an early commitment from in-state phenom Reed Sheppard, and a long list of scholarship offers to the top players in the 2023 rankings.
A year from now, some of those players will have surely committed to the Wildcats. As we wait for those recruitments to play out, here’s a look at the five most intriguing prospects for the 2022 calendar year:
Skyy Clark
The original commitment to UK’s 2022 class, Clark will arrive in Lexington this summer and make his debut for the Wildcats next season. What can Kentucky expect? It’s unclear, and that’s what makes Clark so intriguing.
His 2022 classmates are pretty mystery free at this point. Shaedon Sharpe might play for the Cats this season as an early enrollee. Cason Wallace is the type of high-floor guard prospect with the grit to fit Calipari’s style that should translate to immediate contributions on the court. Power wing Chris Livingston is a versatile, physical player who should be able to provide an instant impact no matter what role he plays.
Clark is a talented point guard and one of the best perimeter scorers in the 2022 class, but we haven’t seen him on the court in nearly a year. He opted out of the end of his junior season due to COVID-19 issues in Tennessee, and he suffered a major knee injury in the spring, before he could play any considerable time with his Nike grassroots team. And that was after the 2020 grassroots schedule was effectively canceled due to the pandemic.
With TyTy Washington projected as a lottery pick and Sahvir Wheeler likely to at least explore professional options, it might be up to Clark and Wallace to share point guard duties on next season’s team. Clark is hoping to return to the court later this month, a great sign in his surgery rehab process, and Kentucky’s coaches will surely be watching to see how he progresses in whatever game action he sees over the next few months.
Mookie Cook
The 2023 class might be lacking in super-talented big men, but it’s incredibly deep at the wing position. Cook — a 6-foot-7 prospect from Portland, Ore. — could end up as the best of the bunch.
Kentucky has extended scholarship offers to at least five wings in the junior class — all of them ranked among the top 15 players nationally — and Cook is looking like he might be the Cats’ best shot at landing a truly elite prospect from that group. He transferred to TyTy Washington’s high school alma mater in Arizona for the current season, took the first official visit of his recruitment to Kentucky in October, and received a UK scholarship offer during that trip.
Calipari and assistant coach Jai Lucas are handling this recruitment, and it sounds like the Wildcats have made a good showing of themselves so far. It’s too early to call any program the clear favorite for Cook’s commitment, but it’s clear that Kentucky is at or near the top of that list.
On the court, he’s backing up his potential. 247Sports analyst Travis Branham recently said Cook — a long, athletic and versatile wing with true perimeter skills — made a case for the No. 1 ranking in the junior class at one of the top showcases of the season. (He’s No. 4 nationally right now). He also projects as an outstanding defender, another reason he’s very high on Calipari’s wish list for 2023.
Isaiah Miranda
Miranda — a 7-footer with Rhode Island ties — is far from the highest-ranked player on Kentucky’s 2023 radar, but he certainly qualifies as one of the most interesting.
Absent from the national rankings just a few months ago, Miranda has emerged as a probable five-star prospect in the 2023 class, thanks to a skill set and potential rare for players of his size. He looks like he could be an instant-impact big man offensively on a national contender two seasons from now. He still needs to work on adding strength and increasing his motor on the defensive end, but there’s still plenty of time for those attributes to come, and plenty of reason to think that Miranda can continue his upward trajectory as a prospect.
The 2023 class is, so far, painfully lacking in elite post player recruits. Miranda has already been scouted by Kentucky coaches multiple times this high school season, and he was the first 2023 big man to visit Lexington, coming to town on an unofficial visit just before Christmas.
UK hasn’t hit on a top-10 big man in a while on the recruiting trail, and Miranda appears to have the potential to reach that level if he continues to progress at a rapid rate. The Cats will be watching.
Yohan Traore
We should get a relatively quick answer to this one.
Traore is the top available player in the 2022 class — No. 9 overall in the 247Sports composite rankings — and the college-ready, 6-foot-10 center just happens to play the position that Kentucky is likely to need to fill before next season.
Daimion Collins and Lance Ware appear to need more seasoning in college beyond this season, but if UK loses Oscar Tshiebwe to the pros, the Cats will definitely be looking for at least one more impact post player between now and next fall.
Traore is the only such player left in the 2022 class, so if the Cats can’t land him, they’ll probably have to hope for a formidable option in the transfer portal. That’s a risky game to play with such an important position, so it would make sense for Kentucky to go all-in with Traore.
That hasn’t happened yet. And it’s starting to look like it won’t. Calipari and Lucas watched him play at the Marshall County Hoop Fest last month, and Traore has said that if UK extends a scholarship offer, he’d use his final official visit on a trip to Lexington. There’s been no news of such an offer as of yet, and the clock might be ticking, with Traore saying he could make a college decision as soon as this month. He told Sports Illustrated late last week that three other schools — Auburn, Texas and UCLA — were the ones in the mix for his final official visit.
This will be one to monitor in the coming weeks. Maybe UK is content to pass on Traore and try its luck with the transfer portal. Maybe something will happen late in the process to rekindle the mutual interest. We’ll see. The other four schools on Traore’s official list are Kansas, Memphis, Michigan and Texas Tech, though that group has fluctuated over the past few months.
Traore’s recruitment has been one of the most difficult in this 2022 cycle to get a handle on, and there have already been plenty of twists and turns with this one. At the end, someone will end up with an instant-impact big man.
DJ Wagner
The top spot on this list goes to the player who has owned the top spot in every 2023 ranking since recruiting analysts started rating prospects in the class.
Wagner — a 6-3 combo guard from Camden, N.J. — is the son of former Calipari star Dajuan Wagner and the grandson of University of Louisville legend Milt Wagner, who was on Calipari’s staff at Memphis. The family remains incredibly close to the Kentucky coach, and this 16-year-old kid seems destined to play college basketball for Calipari … if he does indeed play college basketball two seasons from now.
Viewed as a can’t-miss NBA prospect from an early age, Wagner will have every preps-to-pros option imaginable if he decides the college route isn’t for him. However, recent reforms to NCAA name, image and likeness rules would allow him to make a tidy sum — likely seven figures — for one season at Kentucky, and his family’s familiarity with Calipari makes Kentucky the obvious choice as a college destination. (The UK coach traveled to Delaware to watch him just last week).
History would suggest that the majority of the top prospects in the 2023 class will have made their college (or pro) decisions by the end of this calendar year. No player will be worth watching more than Wagner over the next 12 months.
