Kentucky Wildcats John Calipari On Hand To See Luke Kennard Last Night

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

For a coach of a big time program, the job never seems to stop. If it’s not watching game film, it’s practicing to prepare for the next opponent. If it’s not practice, it’s playing the game and trying to coach your team to a win. If it’s not a game, it’s watching film of hundreds of players to scout out the best. If it’s not scouting, it’s traveling the country to watch and recruit the best players face to face. A coaches job is an endless adventure. Yesterday was the perfect example of this for Kentucky Wildcats Head Coach John Calipari.

Shortly after the win over the Tennessee Volunteers yesterday afternoon, the staff was making a trip to Dayton, OH to watch Luke Kennard. In front of John Calipari, Orlando Antigua and Kenny Payne, the 6’5″ and 180 lbs shooting guard put up 38 points in a loss to HCYA out of Texas. This was only the third loss of the season for Franklin High School out of Ohio. This is the first loss, however, that Luke Kennard has played the entire game. Their other two losses came back to back, when Kennard was injured in the first half of their first loss and had to sit out the entirety of their second.

On the season, Luke Kennard is scoring at will. He is averaging 40.3 points per game, scoring over 50 twice. Even more impressive is that he has only scored less than 35 points three times this season, with one of those being the game he was injured in. John Calipari and company have some work to do if they want to land the high scoring guard from Ohio though, as he is narrowing down his list at a slow rate. At last check, Luke Kennard had seven schools in the running for five official visits. None of the schools on the list are cupcakes either.

The schools in the running are Duke, Florida, Kentucky, Louisville, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio State. It is believed that right now, Kentucky is the favorite, although this is all just rumor and speculation at this point. The strongest indicator of this is the high number of unofficial visits that Luke Kennard has taken to Kentucky at this point. In fact, he has been quoted talking about Kentucky in a recent interview. The quote below talks about his number of visits as well as his relationship with the coaches, both of which bode well for Kentucky.

"This past fall, I’ve taken quite a bit of visits there, just cause you know I had some free time and they invited me up, I’ve gotten to a couple games this season. It’s developed really well, I’ve gotten closer to (UK) and that’s the main thing that I’m pretty sure a recruit wants to have is a great relationship with the head coach, but not only with the head coach, but with the other coaches around. They’ve been great to me."

Hopefully with Calipari’s recruiting and development background, Luke Kennard will see it fit to come to Kentucky and play for the Wildcats. This would be a great way to fast-track his dream of playing in the NBA and becoming a better, more well-rounded player. Of course, this is not what all recruits want. As Calipari has said before, you can’t be the main man and a premier scorer at Kentucky. Kentucky is not for everyone. With that said, it’s your choice Mr. Kennard. Come on down?