The next recruit who’s visiting UK basketball is plenty familiar with the Cats
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- Five-star class of 2026 college basketball recruit Anthony Thompson visits UK basketball.
- Thompson is taking his third recruiting visit to Kentucky.
- Kentucky is one of seven college options still being considered by Thompson.
For the third time in an 11-month span, one of the top basketball prospects in the high school senior class is taking a trip to Lexington.
Starting Wednesday, five-star small forward Anthony Thompson will be taking yet another recruiting visit to Mark Pope and the Wildcats.
Thompson was previously in town on two landmark occasions during Pope’s first season as the UK head coach. His first visit to Kentucky came last October for Big Blue Madness, the major season-preview event that included the Rupp Arena return of former UK coach Rick Pitino and Pope’s first chance to show his brand-new 2024-25 team to fans. That visit is when UK offered a scholarship to Thompson.
Then, Thompson took a return visit to UK in January for Kentucky’s 106-100 win against Florida to open SEC play. The Gators, of course, only lost three more times after this en route to winning last season’s SEC Tournament and NCAA Tournament.
Safe to say, Thompson’s been around for some major Kentucky basketball moments within the last year.
Now, Thompson’s third trip to Kentucky is coinciding with the official start of preseason practice for Pope’s second UK squad. And the Cats’ coaching staff will be putting its best foot forward to try and make Thompson part of its third team in Lexington next year.
Thompson, a 6-foot-8 prospect from Ohio, is ranked by the 247Sports Composite as the No. 8 overall player in the 2026 recruiting class.
“He has a baseline of special touch, elite length and coordination for his size that sets him apart, especially given how young he is for his class,” Zach Welch, an analyst for Pro Insight Basketball, told the Herald-Leader about Thompson. “Offensively, he is both efficient and scalable. He can score at all three levels at an incredibly efficient clip. He is able to consistently rise over defenders from any range and has the touch to convert in all kinds of situations.”
Thompson is working with a top-seven list of schools that includes, in full: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio State, Purdue and Texas. After this week, Thompson will have taken an official visit to all of these schools, except Purdue.
“(They) kind of just told me how big of a priority I am for them with my versatility and my shooting and stuff like that,” Thompson told the Herald-Leader and other reporters over the summer about his relationship with UK. “Obviously, it’s a really storied program, a really good program over a lot of years. It’s a blue blood.”
This week’s official visit to UK is also the last such visit that Thompson has scheduled.
Despite his frequent visits to Lexington, it’s clear that the Wildcats have some ground to make up in Thompson’s recruitment. A trio of Big Ten programs — Indiana, Michigan and Ohio State — are trending the most for Thompson, who has an NIL endorsement deal with Adidas.
That opposing shoe company connection — UK and Nike have an apparel contract in place that runs through the 2034-35 school year — hasn’t stopped Kentucky’s recruiting success in the past, though. Thompson’s AAU basketball program, Indiana Elite, is part of the Adidas circuit, but Indiana Elite was also the same program that UK freshman center Malachi Moreno and ex-Cat Travis Perry played for in recent years.
Thompson has said he is planning to make his college commitment prior to the early signing period, which starts Nov. 12.
UK basketball lags behind other SEC schools in 2026 recruiting
Pope and the Wildcats are still looking to get on the board with a commitment in the 2026 recruiting class.
Ten SEC schools — more than half the league — have at least one player committed from the high school senior ranks. But the SEC’s early 2026 recruiting leader continues to create separation from the rest of the pack.
Over the weekend, Missouri continued its strong recruiting run by picking up a commitment from four-star small forward Aidan Chronister. That gave Mizzou its third commitment in the 2026 recruiting cycle, with Chronister joining a pair of top-tier, five-star prospects in guard Jason Crowe Jr. and power forward Toni Bryant.
In addition to Missouri, each of Alabama, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State have multiple high school commits from the senior class. Arkansas, Florida, LSU, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas A&M each have one commitment in the 2026 class, with LSU’s pledge being an international prospect from Australia.
That leaves Kentucky among the six remaining SEC schools — along with Auburn, Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas — without a 2026 commit.
(On Monday afternoon, news broke that Bruce Pearl is retiring from his head coaching post at Auburn, with his son, Steven, set to take over the Tigers’ program.)
UK’s 2026 recruiting big board has undergone some changes of late, especially since the recruiting evaluation period began earlier this month. The Wildcats have 20 scholarship offers out to uncommitted players from the high school senior class, but not all of these offers are created equal.
The Wildcats won’t be a factor for several players in this group, including small forward Cole Cloer, who was scheduled to visit Kentucky last week before that trip got canceled. Cloer doesn’t have UK listed among his final five schools.
This weekend, five-star point guard Taylen Kinney will be making his college commitment from a group of schools that includes UK, but the Wildcats aren’t expected to be the choice.
There’s still plenty of talent available when it comes to the 2026 recruiting class, with only eight of the top 50 players in the 247Sports Composite rankings having pledged to a school.
This slow commitment pace for top high school seniors comes as the college basketball recruiting landscape continues to adjust to the revenue sharing and transfer portal eras, as well as modern-day roster building that emphasizes veteran players over freshman talent.
This story was originally published September 23, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
