‘We’re all recruiting.’ Kentucky basketball coaches explain how 2024 class came together.
The Kentucky men’s basketball team’s 2024 recruiting class got off to a delayed start and took a while to come together.
But now, with the NCAA’s early signing period having come and gone, the Wildcats find themselves in a familiar spot: with one of the best incoming college basketball recruiting classes in the country.
All four incoming freshmen for next year’s team — guards Boogie Fland and Travis Perry and centers Somto Cyril and Jayden Quaintance — have signed their national letters of intent to become Wildcats.
This means that — in addition to completing a necessary step on their path to enrolling at UK — the Kentucky coaching staff can now comment on each player and about how the 2024 recruiting class positions the program for continued success on the hardwood.
Kentucky coaches collaborate on recruiting class
John Calipari might be the head man in Lexington, but he’s far from the only person affecting Kentucky’s fortunes on the recruiting trail.
Associate coach Orlando Antigua and assistant coaches Chin Coleman and Chuck Martin (who is new to the UK staff this season) are the other UK coaches allowed to recruit off campus.
This means they stop in at major recruiting events and high school practices around the country and often accompany Calipari on in-home visits to help sell Kentucky’s recruiting pitch to top prep basketball prospects.
“I follow his lead in terms of what works for him, what works at Kentucky,” Martin told the Herald-Leader. “I may like a kid, but he may not necessarily work at Kentucky. He’s not a good fit for Coach Cal. It doesn’t mean he’s not a good player. So I think the biggest thing for me is sitting down with (Calipari) … and getting clarity on, ‘Hey, this kid will work. This is a good match here at Kentucky.’”
“Ultimately, the challenge is always still the same: To try and get the best talent, the best players that fit your culture and to fit your philosophy,” Antigua told the Herald-Leader. “We’re pretty upfront in our recruiting process of how difficult it is here. And how much recruits are going to have to sacrifice and buy in. And when they sign up for that, they know it’s special. And we know that they’re special.”
Antigua might have called it “shopping for Cal’s groceries,” but the creation of a Kentucky recruiting class is a holistic process when it comes to talent evaluation.
“When we recruit a player, we all recruit him. We all lay eyes on him. We move a little slower than a lot of other programs, which is why there’s not 50, 60 offers out there,” Antigua said. “We just never do it that way. We need to make sure that we, obviously, identify the talent. And identify the person, the family — and are they buying into what and how we operate?”
According to 247Sports, Kentucky dished out 17 scholarship offers to 2024 recruits.
Of that group, 10 are committed or have signed with other programs and four have signed with Kentucky. Three prospects — small forwards VJ Edgecombe and Karter Knox, and wing Billy Richmond — are still uncommitted.
The Wildcats appear to be in a good spot with Knox (whose older brother, Kevin, was a one-and-done star at UK) and Richmond (whose father played for Calipari at Memphis). Both players have included UK as part of their final four post-high school basketball options.
“There are a lot of little nuances that go on behind the scenes, with the staff. You’ll see me at a game. Then you’ll see Chin at a game. Then you’ll see Chuck at a game. And then you’ll see Cal at a game,” Antigua explained.
“Who’s recruiting who? We’re all recruiting.”
Chin Coleman talks 2024 signees for UK basketball
Currently, four players in the class of 2024 fit the criteria laid out by the Kentucky coaching staff and have signed to become Wildcats.
Cyril, a 6-foot-10 center who plays in the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite league, was the first player to pledge to join the Wildcats in late June.
“He’s a freak of nature,” Coleman said. “... He does things that no one in the world can do, not even guys in the NBA can do some of the stuff that he does in terms of pure shot-blocker, pure vertical spacer. He gets way over the rim. That gives you something that not a lot of teams have in terms of vertical spacing.”
Some of the measurements associated with Cyril truly are staggering: At Overtime Elite’s fall combine in September, Cyril recorded a 7-foot-7 wingspan and had a standing vertical jump of 33 inches, among other standout testing results.
“He blocks shots. He’s an unbelievable teammate. He’s at a place where they work on skill development every single day, so he’ll get better skill (wise),” Coleman added. “But in terms of force, physicality, rim protection, vertical spacing, he’s the best in the country at that. We need to continue to have that on our team.”
The second commitment for Kentucky was Fland in October, and it helped set in motion the later additions of Perry and Quaintance.
“We like the guards here, but we also understand that we had to get another guard, depending on what we have, and we got the best, right? In Boogie. So we’re expecting Boogie to come in here and have the keys to the Lamborghini, and drive it the right way,” Coleman said of Fland, a 6-foot-2 playmaker from just outside New York City.
Both Perry (the 6-foot-2 in-state star from Lyon County High School) and Quaintance (a versatile 6-foot-10 big man) committed to Kentucky this month during the early signing period.
Perry, the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky boys high school basketball history, was a surprise addition to the 2024 UK recruiting class.
“He wanted to come here no matter how many people recruited him. This is where he wanted to be,” Coleman said. “And it says something about kids that want to be here. That says a lot. That means a lot. ... He’s a household name.”
Coleman began his description of Quaintance by calling him a “prodigy.”
“He too has some force and some physicality, but he’s very, very, very skilled. ... He plays like a guard,” Coleman said of Quaintance, who isn’t eligible for the NBA draft until 2026 because of his young age.
The expectation is that Quaintance, who reclassified from the 2025 recruiting group to the 2024 recruiting class, will be a Kentucky Wildcat for two seasons.
“He gives us that forward that we’ve had here in the past in terms of big-time forwards that come here and do really well,” Coleman said. “... Jayden Quaintance for two years, that’s unheard of, right? To have a player of that magnitude, that kind of impact he’s going to have for two years? You’re playing with house money.”
Recruiting news for Kentucky targets in 2025, 2026
While all of the above — the internal discussion and external positioning that come with college basketball recruiting — is most relevantly applied to UK’s 2024 recruiting class, it’s never too early to start looking toward the future.
And Kentucky is already paying plenty of attention to the 2025 and even 2026 recruiting groups.
The Wildcats recently extended scholarship offers to the top players (according to the 247Sports Composite) in the 2025 and 2026 recruiting classes.
Class of 2025’s AJ Dybantsa is viewed as a generational basketball prospect thanks to his length and scoring ability. He was originally part of the 2026 recruiting class before reclassifying. Tyran Stokes (a Louisville native) is the first class of 2026 player to get a scholarship offer from the Cats.
Dybantsa and Stokes are prep school teammates at California-based Prolific Prep.
Both players got a visit from Calipari and Antigua last week, as the UK coaching duo watched Prolific Prep play Christopher Columbus High School (Florida), which boasts Cameron and Cayden Boozer. The Boozer twins (the sons of Duke legend and NBA all-star Carlos Boozer) have both already taken an official visit to UK.
Over the weekend, both of the Boozers twins discussed that visit to Kentucky.
Additionally, class of 2025 guard Meleek Thomas recently told Rivals’ Rob Cassidy that he’d like to take an official visit to Kentucky in February.
Another class of 2025 guard with a Kentucky offer, Darryn Peterson, announced he’s signed a Name, Image and Likeness endorsement deal with Adidas. Peterson, who included Kentucky in a list of his top 16 college options in September, is the first high school athlete to sign an NIL deal with Adidas.
Last October, current Wildcat D.J. Wagner signed an NIL deal as a high schooler with Nike. UK, of course, is a Nike school.
Herald-Leader Staff Writer Ben Roberts contributed to this article.
