Could Tai Wynard play for the Kentucky Wildcats next year?

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The 2015 NCAA Championship will tip off in a couple of hours but the speculation on the Kentucky Wildcats 2015-16 roster is in full swing. Today, John Calipari met with some reporters and said that five players (Willie Cauley-Stein, Karl-Anthony Towns, Trey Lyles, Aaron Harrison and Andrew Harrison) are more than likely going to depart for the NBA Draft. The decisions of Devin Booker and Dakari Johnson are still in the air and Tyler Ulis, Alex Poythress, and Marcus Lee are expected to be the core that leads this team. Kentucky will pick up a player or two via recruiting but one player has not been mentioned yet. And that is the possibility of whether we could see 2016 commit Tai Wynard on the court next season.

Wynard is the international man of mystery for Kentucky Wildcats basketball and his January commitment to Kentucky are a big surprise at the time. Although he was just 16, Wynard seemed to be developing a good game and looked to be a good pickup. DraftExpress’s Jonathan Givony had this to say after the commitment.

"“He is a big, strong kid,” Givony told the Herald-Leader. “He’s very, very mature physically for his age — has really filled out. A lot of European players, people usually think about them as being skinny. He is thick. And he uses that to his advantage. He can go inside and just bully people — he can punish them around the rim because he’s so big and strong. And he’s also a big-time competitor. He’s a hustler.”Skill wise, Givony compared Wynyard to a player who turned in to one of the key cogs on UK’s Final Four team in 2011.“He has good hands and good touch around the basket,” he said. “He’s not really an athlete, he’s not really explosive. … He’s a rebounder, he’s an inside guy, he’s a banger. He’s about like what Josh Harrellson was before he started shooting threes. Something like that.”"

Granted, that sounds like more of a project rather than the five star caliber player that John Calipari brings in, but 16-17 year old kids can develop quickly. And at the time of his commitment, there was a possibility that Wynard could reclassify. And with Trey Lyles probably leaving, the conjecture is that he could help.

"For now, and perhaps for good, Wynyard, 16, is a member of the Class of 2016 – and UK’s first pledge for that year – but he could join the 2015 class at some point. He said he has no real preference on it and that Calipari doesn’t either, just that it would be a decision he’ll work through based on his academics.Wynyard said he’s mostly a physical inside player, but he believes he’ll develop into hybrid power forward/small forward at UK as he continues to work on his shooting, ball-handling and other perimeter skills. Calipari told him he thinks his development pattern could follow that of 6-9 UK freshman Trey Lyles, who was almost exclusively a center in high school but now plays primarily small forward."

Tai Wynard will graduate from high school in December, which means that technically he can enroll in UK during the Christmas break. Whether that happens seems to be a longshot at this time. I have not heard anyone talking about Wynard and it is hard to get any information on him. However, he is a name to keep in the back of your mind as we finish up the recruiting.

Could he play next year? It’s hard to say, not knowing the talent level he is playing against now, but here is his mixtape. Check it out.

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