Top recruit Caleb Wilson has Kentucky basketball on his final list, sets commitment date
Kentucky men’s basketball’s top remaining target in the 2025 recruiting class continues to narrow his college options. And the Wildcats continue to be well-positioned to land his eventual commitment.
On Friday, five-star class of 2025 power forward Caleb Wilson narrowed his list of college options to three schools.
Wilson will be making his college choice between UK, North Carolina and Ohio State, with an official decision planned for Thursday, Jan. 23, he told 247Sports. Previously, Wilson was working with a top-five list of schools that also included Central Florida and Tennessee.
Wilson — a 6-foot-9 power forward from Atlanta — is a consensus five-star prospect in the highly regarded 2025 recruiting class. Wilson is ranked as the No. 5 overall player in the class, per the 247Sports Composite.
Head coach Mark Pope and the Cats already have three players signed in the 2025 recruiting class: guards Jasper Johnson and Acaden Lewis and center Malachi Moreno.
But Wilson — with his blend of size, defensive disruption and versatile offensive game — would bring something new to the table when it comes to UK’s incoming freshmen for next season.
“Caleb is an incredibly intriguing prospect with a lot of traits that NBA teams covet nowadays,” Zach Welch, an analyst for Pro Insight Basketball, told the Herald-Leader after studying film of Wilson. “His blend of length, explosiveness and agility offers a great physical foundation. When you add the ball skills, scoring upside, and defensive versatility on top of that, you get a highly coveted archetype. He still has plenty of room to grow, but the ceiling is sky-high for Wilson.”
For a number of reasons, a successful recruitment of Wilson to Lexington by Pope would send a strong message about Kentucky’s recruiting outlook under the first-year head coach.
Should Wilson commit to Kentucky, he would become the top prospect in UK’s 2025 recruiting class. The 247Sports Composite has Johnson ranked as the No. 14 overall prospect, Moreno ranked at No. 27 and Lewis at No. 29.
Wilson’s potential addition would also cement Kentucky as having one of the best recruiting classes in the nation for 2025. Currently, the Wildcats are ranked fifth in the team recruiting rankings for 2025. UK would move up to at least fourth in the country — jumping ex-UK coach John Calipari and Arkansas in the process — with a commitment from Wilson.
Wilson is projected to be a one-and-done college player who is expected to be a first-round selection in the 2026 NBA draft. His commitment to Pope would represent a new frontier for the UK coach. During Pope’s nine combined seasons as the head coach at Utah Valley and BYU, Pope never oversaw a future NBA draft pick, or even a future NBA player.
Obviously that will change at Kentucky. But securing a commitment from a player with Wilson’s NBA potential so early in Pope’s coaching tenure in Lexington would be considered a major coup.
Wilson told 247Sports that Pope is a “great guy on and off the court.”
“He coaches with energy and they’re having a great year this year,” Wilson added about UK as his potential college choice. “They’re playing very good. Their system really fits a long 4 like me in the way that they play. And it’s a blueblood so that’s one of the best fan bases and basketball cultures in the country.”
David Sisk — a basketball analyst for Rivals who covers both Kentucky and North Carolina — told the Herald-Leader that he would envision Wilson playing a similar role at UK to that of current Kentucky player Andrew Carr, despite Carr and Wilson bringing different skill sets to the floor.
“He came up as a post (player) before he started transitioning over to perimeter skills here in the last year or so,” Sisk said of Wilson. “He’s very comfortable playing on the block … He’s just got a ton of blocks and a ton of rebounds (in high school play). He’s got a double-double and he threatens a triple-double just about every night he plays, because he is able to rebound and block shots. Just the versatility that Pope has in his offense allows him to say, ‘Hey, we can use you in a number of different ways here and really use your versatility.’”
Caleb Wilson has been a longtime Kentucky basketball recruit
The recruitment of Wilson to Kentucky has been a process years in the making.
It was Calipari who first offered Wilson a UK scholarship in June 2023. Wilson was a Big Blue Madness visitor in October 2023.
While Pope started slow when it came to Wilson’s recruitment after he became the UK head coach in April, Pope quickly settled into the rhythm of trying to lure the talented Atlanta native to Lexington.
Wilson took an official visit to Pope and UK in September, a weekend that coincided with UK football’s home game against Georgia. Wilson’s visit to Kentucky last fall also included time spent watching a UK basketball practice and visiting Keeneland.
Wilson was also in attendance in November for one of the standout moments of the Kentucky basketball season so far: UK’s Champions Classic comeback victory over Duke at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena..
The class of 2025 prospect also seems to have studied up on his UK basketball history. In an interview last fall, Wilson name-dropped a former Kentucky player, Jarred Vanderbilt, when discussing the current NBA players that he tries to model his game after.
Kentucky’s pursuit of Wilson has also been aided by several members of the Wildcats’ existing 2025 recruiting class.
This begins with Lewis, a four-star point guard from Washington, D.C., who is good friends with Wilson.
Lewis and Wilson have spent recent months posting cryptically on social media, with the two prospects indicating a desire to team up together in college.
Additionally, Johnson — a Central Kentucky native who is the son of former UK football star Dennis Johnson — has pushed for Wilson to join Kentucky’s 2025 recruiting group.
“Pushing for him hard. I know he’s a dominant force down at the 4 position,” Johnson told reporters in November at Atlanta’s Overtime Elite program, where Johnson is playing his senior season. “He can score the ball, block shots, rebound, can do it all. Really just trying to push for him. I know that’ll make it a lot easier on us offensively as well. You can’t really strategize on anybody with him on our team as well. Would really be excited to play with him. … Hopefully we can get together in college.”
Of course, a high-level college basketball recruitment in modern times isn’t complete without a discussion of the monetary name, image and likeness (NIL) package that’s on the table.
That’s no different with Wilson, and Kentucky has also positioned itself well on this front.
“He’s going to get a lot, no matter where he goes,” Sisk previously told the Herald-Leader about Wilson.
Under Pope, UK has already displayed a strong ability to put together both a solid on-court recruiting pitch and off-court NIL package when the Wildcats secured a September commitment from Johnson.
That success with Johnson in the NIL space provides a blueprint to work from when it comes to Wilson.
“It just seems like the whole process of Jasper Johnson and Caleb Wilson kind of went hand in hand down the stretch,” Sisk said of the players’ recruitments.
With Wilson’s commitment date now known, the number of five-star recruits still on the board in the 2025 recruiting class continues to shrink.
Currently, only four of the 13 recruits ranked as five-star prospects by the 247Sports Composite are yet to announce their college plans.
In addition to Wilson, those players are power forward Nate Ament (No. 4), power forward Koa Peat (No. 6) and combo guard Brayden Burries (the No. 12 overall recruit).
Earlier this week, Ament announced a top-11 list of schools, which includes Kentucky. Aside from UK, Ament’s list of finalists includes Arkansas, BYU, Duke, Georgetown, Kansas State, Louisville, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas.
Ament’s recruitment is expected to extend into the spring.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 3:34 PM.
