Kentucky Basketball: Is the 2017 recruiting class the best class of all time?

It’s no secret that Kentucky Basketball will is bringing in the top ranked recruiting class next season. But is it the best class ever?

According to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, Kentucky Basketball’s 2017 recruiting class is the best class ever. There is an exception to every rule. Before all of the internet rankings and the recruiting services, there may or may have been a class that is better than this one. But, that’s doubtful.

Kentucky will be welcoming eight new faces to Lexington this summer as John Calipari reloads for another run at a national title. After losing nearly every player who gave significant contributions last season, the 2017-18 version of the Kentucky Wildcats will take on a very drastic change. This recruiting class may be the best recruiting class ever, but they are still going to be freshmen. The youth movement making it’s way to Lexington will certainly have talent.

The Best Class Ever

Claiming that Kentucky has the best recruiting class ever is a broad and bold statement. What better way to kick off the summer than to make crazy accusations and predictions about the pride of the Bluegrass State. The RSCI is a service provided that accumulates data from the many different evaluation sites such as Scout, ESPN, Rivals and 247Sports. They take the information and score the criterion based on rankings. Each ranking gets a score and those scores are added to get a consensus rating index. Here is an excerpt from the website on the process:

"The formula for calculating the RSCI rankings is quite simple and completely objective.  Here’s how it works:The process begins with a single top 100 list from one of the experts.The players listed are assigned points based on their position on that list.The top ranked player is given 100 points, #2 gets 99 points, #3 gets 98, and so on with #100 getting 1 point.Repeat step 2 for each of the top 100 lists.Finally, add up the scores based on all the lists and sort the players by their score in descending order."

The website moves claims to be a good representation of the recruiting rankings as a whole. When reviewing the 2017 Kentucky recruiting class, the site creators had this to say:

"We have a new record! This class beats out the previous record of 557 by the UK 2013 class by a decent margin. If all five of the RSCI sources had counted Hamidou Diallo with the 2017 class (2 deemed him to be a 2016 recruit even though he joined the team midyear and didn’t play), the Wildcats’ score would have been more like a mind blowing 637."

The Class

Wildcat Blue Nation is consistent and generally uses the 247Sports rankings as reference for recruiting. The 2017 recruiting class lists five players in the top 20 of the overall player rankings. Hamidou Diallo (No. 9), Kevin Knox (No. 10), Jarred Vanderbilt (No. 11),  PJ Washington (No. 14) and Nick Richards (No. 17) are all listed in the top 20 prep players of 2017. Quade Green, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jemarl Baker are all listed outside the top 20.

Next: Kentucky's Most Wanted of the 2018 Recruiting Class

This class is the consensus top ranked class in all of college basketball. With eight recruits set to make their names known to the Big Blue Nation, it’s safe to say that the state of Kentucky is very excited for basketball season to get here.