Class of 2025 prospect Acaden Lewis has Kentucky in his top eight, plus more UK recruiting news
New Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope continues to lay the groundwork for future recruiting success for the Wildcats.
Between taking another international trip to watch top prospects in action, to making a list cut for a player that UK has recruited heavily this spring and summer, Pope has maintained an active presence as a recruiter since returning to Lexington this year.
These developments headline the recent news in the UK basketball recruiting world, with more activity to come later this month when the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) season concludes with the prestigious Peach Jam event in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Peach Jam will run from July 13-21. According to the NCAA Division I men’s basketball recruiting calendar, July 11-14 and July 19-July 21 are both marked as “evaluation periods.”
During an evaluation period, “it is permissible for authorized athletics department staff members to be involved in off-campus activities designed to assess the academic qualifications and playing ability of prospective student-athletes. No in-person, off-campus recruiting contacts shall be made with the prospective student-athlete during an evaluation period..”
This means Pope and his Kentucky basketball coaching staff are allowed to attend and watch games at Peach Jam.
And before Peach Jam, recruiting work will pick back up for Kentucky this week with the Adidas 3SSB championship finals in South Carolina. Several Kentucky recruits play on the Adidas circuit, including Nate Ament, Malachi Moreno and Darryn Peterson.
The Adidas 3SSB finals fall during the July 11-14 evaluation period.
Acaden Lewis includes Kentucky basketball in top eight list
One of the top guard prospects in the 2025 recruiting class will continue to consider the Kentucky Wildcats as he determines his future college home.
On Wednesday, Acaden Lewis — a 6-foot-3, 190-pound combo guard who is ranked by the 247Sports Composite as a four-star prospect — included UK among his list of top eight schools.
Along with Kentucky, Lewis also included Auburn, Duke Michigan, North Carolina, Syracuse, Tennessee and two-time defending national champions UConn in his top eight.
A quartet of UK basketball coaches — Pope, along with assistant coaches Alvin Brooks III, Cody Fueger and Jason Hart — watched Lewis play this summer at the NBPA Top 100 Camp in Orlando.
Lewis then took an unofficial visit to the UK campus, which coincided with the start of summer practice for Pope’s 2024-25 UK team. That visit was when Lewis picked up a scholarship offer from Kentucky.
Lewis plays prep basketball at Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C., and has emerged as one of the early recruiting targets for Pope at Kentucky.
In addition to watching Lewis play at the NBPA Top 100 Camp, the UK staff watched Lewis in May during a Nike EYBL event in Indiana.
Lewis plays for Team Durant on the EYBL circuit and is one of that circuit’s leaders in assists (6.1 per game) and steals (1.5 per game) following the regular season. Lewis averaged more than 16 points per game for Team Durant across the 15-game regular-season schedule.
He continued that impressive scoring form at the NBPA Top 100 Camp: Lewis averaged 15.1 points and 3.6 assists per game at that event. He was named one of 10 all-star performers from the event’s 100 participants.
“Just rebounding and playing hard,” Lewis said at that event when asked about areas in which he’d like to improve. “That’s the one thing that you always control. Whether you’re scoring, whether you’re not scoring, you can play really hard.”
This summer, Lewis has already jumped 12 spots in the 247Sports Composite rankings from the No. 59 overall ranking to his current spot as the No. 47 prospect in the 2025 class.
“I think I’m a great teammate,” Lewis added at the NBPA Top 100 Camp. “I’m dapping everybody up. Trying to create new bonds. And I feel like people respect that, so they’re OK with me taking over if I need to because I’m creating such good relationships.”
Hart, the new UK assistant coach who was previously the head coach of the NBA’s G League Ignite team, is one of the lead recruiters for Lewis for Kentucky.
In addition to that summer unofficial visit to UK, Lewis has also recently taken unofficial visits to North Carolina and UConn. Lewis will also take an official visit to the Tar Heels later this year.
Mark Pope takes another international recruiting trip for UK basketball
Pope’s first foray into the college basketball recruiting landscape at Kentucky has already included several international trips.
First, there was a trip to Argentina to watch the FIBA Men’s Under-18 AmeriCup, a competition the United States won handily with a roster that featured UK recruits Nate Ament, Shelton Henderson and Jasper Johnson.
More recently, Pope headed to Europe to watch another USA Basketball youth national team come home with a gold medal. Earlier this month, Pope attended the 2024 FIBA Under-17 World Cup in Turkey.
Both Pope (who during his professional playing career played for two Turkish teams) and Fueger attended portions of the event, which was dominated by a U.S. squad that included both Cameron and Cayden Boozer, top-ranked recruit AJ Dybantsa and Chris Cenac, among players with UK recruiting interest.
Also on this winning American team was Tyran Stokes, a Louisville native who is one of the top-ranked recruits in the class of 2026. Stokes averaged more than 12 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists per game during the World Cup.
John Calipari lands another class of 2024 recruit
Kentucky basketball’s planned 2024 recruiting class went up in smoke this offseason when former coach John Calipari left to become the head coach at Arkansas. Of the six players who were originally committed to UK to play for Calipari, three of them — Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond — followed the former UK coach to Fayetteville.
With Jayden Quaintance going to Arizona State and Somto Cyril flipping to Georgia, only Travis Perry — the former Lyon County High School standout and the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky high school boys basketball history — remained committed to UK to play for Pope’s first team.
Meanwhile at Arkansas, Calipari has now added a fourth freshman to his 2024-25 roster. And this one doesn’t have any previous ties to UK.
On Wednesday, three-star combo guard Casmir Chavis committed to the Razorbacks. Chavis, who is ranked by the 247Sports Composite as the No. 177 overall prospect in this year’s recruiting group, is from Minnesota and was previously signed to play at Washington.
Chavis signed to play with the Huskies when former head coach Mike Hopkins led that program. Hopkins was fired in March, and was replaced by former Utah State coach Danny Sprinkle.
Of course, in addition to the recruiting trio of Fland, Knox and Richmond, Calipari will also have several former Kentucky players on his first Arkansas team after they transferred this offseason to Arkansas.
Those ex-Cats are Zvonimir Ivisic, Adou Thiero and D.J. Wagner.
This story was originally published July 11, 2024 at 6:51 AM.
