Next Cats player page: Kentucky recruiting target Jaden Bradley
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Bio information, video highlights and the latest rankings for all of Kentucky’s basketball commitments and recruiting targets for the class of 2021 and beyond. These pages include John Calipari’s quotes on the UK signees for next season, as well as the newest Crystal Ball predictions for the Wildcats’ top uncommitted targets.
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One of the first players from the 2022 class to attract recruiting interest from Kentucky’s coaching staff, Jaden Bradley is also one of the top playmakers in all of high school basketball.
The Rochester, N.Y. native moved to the Charlotte area in middle school and will finish up his high school career at IMG Academy (Fla.), transferring to the national prep powerhouse after leading his previous school to a 27-6 record and its first state championship in 14 years during the 2019-20 season.
JADEN BRADLEY
- Point guard | Rochester, N.Y.
- 6-foot-3, 180 pounds
- 247Sports: No. 21 overall
- Rivals.com: No. 25 overall
- ESPN.com: No. 12 overall
Bradley averaged 10.1 points, 6.1 assists and 4.0 rebounds per game while shooting 55 percent from beyond the arc last season, his first for prep powerhouse IMG Academy in Florida.
There aren’t many point guards as talented as Bradley in any class.
“Jaden was the best player on the floor, night in and night out,” his former high school coach, Che Roth, said after his 2019-20 season. “He plays with so much poise, so much feel — to be 16 and have command of what he wants to do. The biggest jump I think that he made this year was, instead of playing a position — playing on the ball, playing point guard, whatever you want to call it — he figured out how to run his team. On the floor, in the locker room, possession in, possession out — his feel and his maturity are so far advanced for a kid his age. And how he sees the game — he’s one or two steps ahead, if not three, on every possession.”
Before the COVID-19 recruiting shutdown, Bradley had already worked in campus visits to Kentucky, North Carolina, Auburn, Tennessee, Wake Forest and Clemson. He was in Lexington for the 2019 Blue-White Game, and former UK assistant coach Joel Justus started recruiting Bradley very early in his high school career. In June, he took official visits to Alabama, Arizona, Michigan and UNC.
North Carolina — his de facto home-state school — extended a scholarship offer to Bradley shortly after the recruiting shutdown began, and Kansas, Michigan, UCLA, Louisville and Florida State are among the other top programs that sent out offers after his sophomore year wrapped up. Kentucky offered Bradley in early January, and the Wildcats are likely to be among his favorites as he gets closer to a college decision.
The Wildcats already have a commitment from five-star 2022 point guard Skyy Clark, but Bradley and Clark would be plenty versatile enough to play together in the same backcourt. Both player have expressed excitement toward the possibility of teaming up in college.
Quotable
“He’s invested a ton of time in the gym, and we’ve worked a lot on shooting the ball. Because a kid like him — he can get to his spot, and he can get to the rim — but, at the end of his freshman year, teams were making him shoot the ball. So, getting him comfortable on the perimeter (was important). And the other part of it is — Jaden’s an elite defender. He wants the challenge of guarding the other team’s best perimeter player, night in and night out. Most guys, they don’t want to do that. He does. He wants to take away another team’s biggest strength, and that’s something that our team rallied around. Because, if they see him do it … now, the rest of the guys, they rise to the challenge.” — Cannon School (N.C.) head coach Che Roth
Crystal Ball
Bradley doesn’t seem to be in a hurry with his recruitment, and his Crystal Ball page reflected that ... until the Kentucky offer came in January. Some predictions in favor of the Cats have already been made there, though there is a pro-Alabama pick from a national analyst on his Rivals.com player page. There is no timetable for Bradley’s college decision, and he has not yet narrowed his list of schools.
This story was originally published November 26, 2020 at 2:00 PM.
