UK basketball hosts five-star recruit for visit to begin Big Blue Madness week
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Five-star point guard Deron Rippey Jr. is taking a recruiting visit to UK basketball.
- Rippey is ranked as the top point guard prospect in the 2026 class.
- UK basketball still doesn’t have a commit from the 2026 recruiting class.
At long last, Deron Rippey Jr. is finally taking his official visit to the Kentucky basketball program.
Rippey, a five-star point guard in the 2026 recruiting class, will begin his visit with Mark Pope and the Wildcats on Monday.
His trip to Lexington has been a long time coming. Ranked by the 247Sports Composite as the top point guard prospect in the high school senior class, Rippey was originally scheduled to visit UK in early August before weather issues scuttled his travel plans.
Rippey’s trip to Kentucky was then rescheduled for early October. Now, after another slight schedule adjustment, Rippey’s visit is on.
There are plenty of reasons for Pope and the UK fan base to be excited that Rippey is finally set to spend some time in Central Kentucky. The 6-foot-2 floor general is highly touted as the No. 11 overall recruit in the 2026 class. He has Kentucky listed among the final nine schools under consideration in his recruitment.
The 18-year-old Rippey comes from college basketball bloodlines, as his father of the same name played at East Carolina and Eastern New Mexico.
The younger Rippey earned a Kentucky basketball scholarship offer in June, and he now represents one of UK’s last shots at landing a guard in the 2026 recruiting cycle.
With Jason Crowe Jr. (Missouri) and Taylen Kinney (Kansas) now off the board, Kentucky is still seriously recruiting two uncommitted guard prospects in the high school senior class — Rippey and shooting guard Jordan Smith.
Smith will also be in Lexington this week. He is one of UK’s expected visitors for Big Blue Madness, which is set for Saturday night at Rupp Arena.
Rippey’s early-week visit to Kentucky will overlap with UK’s annual Pro Day for NBA scouts, which will take place Tuesday evening inside Memorial Coliseum.
Deron Rippey Jr. to take Kentucky basketball recruiting visit
Earlier this summer, one of Rippey’s travel basketball coaches on the Adidas circuit provided detailed insight on his game to the Herald-Leader.
Gary Ervin, a former SEC standout at Arkansas and Mississippi State, described the pace that Rippey plays at, and the ways Rippey’s game will expand with the use of ball screens in a college offense.
“Just his demeanor, how he approaches the game, how much of a gym rat he was, how much smarter he got each and every year, that was something that I was wowed by, because it’s rare that you get a young man that is doing these things at a young age,” Ervin said of his first impressions of Rippey.
Ervin, a four-star recruit in the 2003 class, also projected that Rippey will make an instant impact once he begins his college career.
“I just feel that at the next level he’s going to be able to impact a program right away, not only because of what he does on the court, but because of (what he brings) off the court,” Ervin said. “He’s very big on the community. He’s a humble young man, never gets in trouble. He’s a gym rat. I think he’s going to have an amazing, amazing college career wherever he goes.”
From Kentucky’s perspective, it doesn’t hurt that Rippey already has an understanding of what instruction from Pope feels and looks like. Rippey received on-court coaching from Pope while attending a USA Basketball youth national team training camp in June.
While Kentucky’s potential roster continuity is something to monitor when it comes to any projected early production from freshmen, the Wildcats also need to land some of those future first-year players for that discourse to take place.
The Wildcats are still without a commitment from the high school senior class, a distinction that’s becoming increasingly rare in the SEC landscape. Of the 16 schools in the league, only three are yet to land a 2026 recruit. Those schools are Auburn, Georgia and UK.
Will that first 2026 commitment be Rippey?
It appears Kentucky has to make up ground in his recruitment in order for that to be the case. The Cats got plenty of buzz over the summer for Rippey, but recently it appears that the likes of Miami, North Carolina State and Tennessee are the leaders.
Rippey also has plenty of activity in his recruitment still to go. He’s previously taken visits this year to Miami, North Carolina, Texas and Syracuse. After his trip to Lexington, Rippey has visits scheduled to Duke, Tennessee and N.C. State.
