Top Kentucky basketball recruit Nate Ament is visiting John Calipari and Arkansas
During John Calipari’s 15-season run as the Kentucky men’s basketball coach, UK fans grew accustomed to Calipari winning most of the high school recruiting battles he entered.
Within this run of high school recruiting dominance, Calipari also made a habit of swooping in at a late stage of a recruitment and still managing to land the prospect in question.
Don’t look now, but Calipari may be doing so again, but this time for his new school, Arkansas, and at the expense of his old program, Kentucky.
This weekend, class of 2025 standout Nate Ament will be taking an official recruiting visit to Calipari and the Razorbacks. Arkansas closes its regular season Saturday with a home game against No. 25 Mississippi State.
Ament — a 6-foot-9 power forward who is a five-star prospect and the No. 4 national recruit in the 2025 class — is down to just five schools in his recruitment. Ament is still considering going to Arkansas, Duke, Kentucky, Louisville and Tennessee.
Arkansas had been the only school from this quintet that Ament was yet to officially visit. That’s no longer the case, and Ament will soon have made official visits to each of his finalists.
Late last month, Ament trimmed his list of colleges under consideration from 11 schools to those five.
In addition to narrowing his group of college finalists, Ament’s planned commitment timeline has also come to the surface. According to reports, Ament is planning to make his college commitment during this spring’s McDonald’s All-American Game festivities in New York City. This year’s high school showcase will be held Tuesday, April 1, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Ament is one of 24 boys players that earned McDonald’s All-American honors this year, a group that also includes 2025 UK signee center Malachi Moreno of Great Crossing High School in Georgetown.
Ament is the top recruiting target left in the 2025 high school class for head coach Mark Pope and the UK program.
Pope’s first true high school recruiting class at UK currently includes Moreno and left-handed guards Jasper Johnson and Acaden Lewis. All three are top-30 recruits nationally.
Ament, who plays high school basketball in Virginia, was teammates with Johnson on the United States team that won gold at the FIBA U18 Men’s AmeriCup in Argentina last summer.
Ament is also the highest-rated prospect who has yet to commit to a school in the 2025 class.
“At 6-foot-9, Ament possesses the ball skills and feel to be a true offensive engine at this level, while also having the ancillary skills to scale down into a more complementary role if need be,” Zach Welch, an analyst for Pro Insight Basketball, told the Herald-Leader. “I’ve seen times when he absolutely takes over on the offensive end, leveraging his feathery touch and high-release point to drain shot after shot from the mid-post and beyond the arc, while also using his comfort as a ball handler to get downhill and create for others.”
“He also has the upside to be a defensive catalyst, given his impressive agility at his size.”
When Ament revealed his list of final schools last month, he did so during an appearance on The Youngins Sports Podcast presented by Swish Cultures. During that appearance, Ament touched on each of his final five schools, including both Arkansas and Kentucky.
“Coach Cal, and pretty much the whole coaching staff, they started (recruiting me) a bit later than other schools, but they’ve been putting me through the fire,” Ament said of the Razorbacks’ recruitment. “They’ve been coming to a lot of my practices, a lot of my games. Even some of the recruits they have now have been texting me. So, obviously Coach Cal has produced a lot of NBA-level talent, and beginning as a basketball player and seeing him at Kentucky, it’s kind of a dream for a lot of players to see all these NBA players playing on one team.”
For 2025, Calipari currently has three high school signees who all rank highly across the major recruiting services. The top-ranked future Razorback is shooting guard Meleek Thomas, who is the No. 10 player in the 2025 class. Arkansas will also be bringing in point guard Darius Acuff Jr., the No. 12 player in the class, and small forward Isaiah Sealy, an in-state recruit who ranks as the No. 75 prospect.
Both Acuff and Thomas are McDonald’s All-Americans.
“Coach Pope, high character coach. Not just talking about X’s and O’s,” Ament said of the first-year Kentucky coach. “But as a person, he’s a high-character guy and that’s something you like to see as a player. But also his offense is one of the best in the nation. (UK) gets up and down the floor, shoots the 3 really well, so seeing that as a versatile player who does all those things is very tempting for sure.”
Kentucky picked up its intensity when recruiting Ament in recent months, a strategy that was employed after UK lost a recruiting battle to North Carolina for five-star power forward Caleb Wilson in January.
Ament was on a visit to Tennessee on Jan. 28 when a shorthanded Kentucky squad went to Knoxville and won. Then, Ament took an official visit to Kentucky last month and watched another shorthanded win by UK over Tennessee on Feb. 11.
Pope also went to Virginia last month to watch Ament play on his high school senior night.
Duke and Louisville are reportedly the leaders in Ament’s recruitment, with a significant monetary name, image and likeness (NIL) package set to be a key factor in his college choice.
But Arkansas and Kentucky both still harbor realistic hopes of landing Ament, which would go a long way in determining which program finishes with a better 2025 recruiting class.
Kentucky’s 2025 recruiting class ranks as the sixth-best incoming class in the nation. The Wildcats trail runaway leader Duke, Houston, UConn, Arkansas and Notre Dame on the team recruiting leaderboard.
Arkansas, Notre Dame and UK are tightly bunched together on that leaderboard, and landing Ament would easily give UK a top-four recruiting class for 2025.
John Calipari, Arkansas trending toward making NCAA Tournament
In addition to hosting Ament for this weekend’s official recruiting visit, Calipari and the Hogs are still trying to secure their spot in the NCAA Tournament field.
Arkansas’ postseason hopes were looking dire at certain points this season, but the Razorbacks have rallied and currently find themselves projected to be part of March Madness.
Arkansas has won three of its last four games — triumphs over No. 15 Missouri, fellow bubble team Texas and likely tournament team Vanderbilt — and is currently listed by ESPN as one of the last four teams in the NCAA field.
The Hogs are a combined 7-12 in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games this season, and 11-0 against all other opponents. Of course, one of those Quad 1 victories came at Kentucky on Feb. 1.
