2014’s Emmanuel Mudiay down to five teams, Kentucky Wildcats still in running

Mandatory Credit: Beth Hall-USA TODAY Sports

Slowly but surely, John Calipari seems to be closing in on his man for the 2014 class. With Andrew Harrison thought to be a one year wonder at UK, the big questions is what point guard John Calipari will nab to replace him. It is looking like Emmanuel Mudiay may be that man and yesterday he narrowed his teams down to five, and yup, Kentucky was involved.

"Texas point guard Emmanuel Mudiay narrowed his list to five schools before ESPNU’s broadcast of the Adidas Nations finals Monday night. An ESPN graphic showed that Mudiay was considering Kentucky, Kansas, Oklahoma State, SMU and Baylor. ESPN analyst Paul Biancardi later tweeted that the five-star prospect had narrowed his list to those schools earlier in the day."

Keeping with the 2014 theme, UK fans will get a couple of opportunities to check out big man Cliff Hawkins this upcoming season. He is considering both UK and UL, and will play in the Bluegrass twice this season.

"His Curie Metropolitan High School team will return to the Marshall County Hoopfest in Benton on Dec. 6-7 and will play in the inaugural McCracken County Hoopfest on Jan. 10-11. The 6-9, 230-pound Alexander played this summer with 6-11 center Jahlil Okafor, the nation’s No. 1 prospect. Yet he’s still become one of the nation’s top targets because of his size, power and mobility. He’s an aggressive rebounder. Alexander is being pursued by Michigan State, Duke, Ohio State, Illinois, Louisville, Arizona, Baylor, DePaul, Kansas, Memphis, Arizona and others. Recently he told media members at an AAU tournament what he liked about Kentucky and Louisville: On Kentucky: “Coach Cal is a great guy. I love the campus. A great practice facility. I worked out there when I went down there. He’s a great guy. I love the coaching staff.” On Louisville: “Louisville, same thing with those guys. Me and coach (Rick) Pitino have a great relationship since they started recruiting me. We’ll go there from there.”"

Feb 27, 2013; Lexington, KY, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari coaches his team against the Mississippi State Bulldogs in the second half at Rupp Arena. Kentucky defeated Mississippi State 85-55. Mandatory Credit: Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

So after being tied to seemingly every open NBA job in the past four years, is John Calipari suddenly not NBA worthy? Apparently now, everyone is worried about who will be the next Brad Stevens and make the jump to the NBA. The folks over at CBS Sports got together and released a list of the college coaches that are best equipped to jump to the NBA and John Calipari was fourth and Fred Hoibeg seems to be the new flavor of the month.

Here is the list and what the panel had to say about Cal.

"Fred Hoiberg (19 percent) Mike Krzyzewski (16 percent) Billy Donovan (14 percent) Bill Self (14 percent) John Calipari (12 percent) Tom Izzo (12 percent) Thad Matta (5 percent) Others receiving votes: Tony Bennett, Larry Brown, Kevin Ollie, Jay Wright On John Calipari: “Coach Cal has evolved as a coach and is just a better pro coaching prospect now than he was when he was at UMass. He always has talent and he does not try to over-coach or over-think things for his teams. I love the fact that he is not stubborn strategically. If you look at his UK teams, they were all different in terms of type of talent but still successful. His 2011 UK team truly exemplified this as they played a different style than the prior UK and Memphis teams he had coached and went to the Final Four."