The Fear That Kentucky Wildcats’ Basketball Recruiting Imposes
Ever since Coach John Calipari took to the head coaching job at the University of Kentucky over three years ago, Kentucky has been rising to the top of the college basketball world, and Coach Cal’s ability to recruit the best and brightest recruits every year is the key to the success of the Kentucky Wildcats. Earlier today, an article by ESPN Recruiting Nation’s Dave Telep discusses the top ten scariest college basketball programs to have to recruit against. Coach John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats came out at the top of the list as the program that should be the most feared when they throw their name in the running for a highly ranked recruit. The criteria used to rank the teams on this list was highest level talent added and fought for on a regular basis, strength of the opponents you recruit against for players, ability to not only make the list of recruits, but be a factor in the final lists, current recruiting momentum alongside recent success, ability to step outside your natural geographic region and land recruits, and finally, ability to close the hardest and shut down a recruit’s decision-making process before any other programs enter the equation.
Telep had this to say as to why the Kentucky Wildcats were number 1 out of the top ten scariest programs to have to recruit against.
"John Calipari signed three No. 1 classes in a row prior to finishing second in 2012. With one phone call, Kentucky makes the top three on just about any recruit’s list. When it pushes hard enough, the Wildcats can be counted on to be a finalist in nearly every situation Calipari deems important. There isn’t a program that swings a mightier stick than UK at this moment in this era of college basketball. When it comes to getting involved with top-five prospects, Kentucky is king. It is the program that causes the most consternation for rival recruiters. It has its titles, All-Americans and an embarrassment of lottery picks under Calipari, and that’s what ultimately creates the notion that UK is the top dog. UK has the power, patience and confidence to wait out elite players and doesn’t flinch."
The fact that Kentucky has the power to put themselves at or near the top of any recruits list isn’t something that most schools are used to, but at Kentucky, Wildcats fans are learning that it is the new custom. Coach Cal has done so much for this program in only three years, most of which no one could imagine after the Billy G years that burned a college basketball program to the ground. However, Coach Calipari’s ability to recruit has rebuilt this program from the ground up, currently having placed UK on a pedestal atop the college basketball world. Cats fans know that John Calipari is exactly what this program needed and he is essentially the King of Lexington. For the time being, it would appear that the pair of Coach Cal and UK work together as the king, and college basketball recruiting is their domain.
The rest of the list, starting with the 2nd ranked team, is North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Florida, Texas, Baylor, Arizona, UCLA, and Syracuse. Telep also includes teams that are “knocking on the door” of being a top ten most feared teamin the recruiting world which includes Indiana, Ohio State, and Louisville. One more list that Telep includes is teams that “in three years it could happen here”, which consists of North Carolina State and UNLV. The entire article can be found here. Do you agree with this list? Disagree? Small changes? Big changes? Let us know in the comment section below.