Is Kentucky Basketball on the naughty or nice list?
By Luke Bennett
Recruiting Excellence
No coach had such an influence on the dynamic of a single sport this decade than John Calipari and college basketball. When he took the reigns in 2009, John Calipari quickly proved he was the best recruiter in the country. In his first few years, generational talents flooded Lexington, Kentucky. Names like John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Karl Anthony Towns, Devin Booker (dare I keep going?) changed the landscape of college basketball and even the NBA. The torrent of Kentucky players into the league was unprecedented. Calipari saw 19 players selected in the lottery in his time at Kentucky and over 30 drafted. His pulse on the system was the best in the country, and it wasn’t even close.
Yet, the critics denied it: ‘You can’t win with a team with so many freshmen in key roles’, ‘one-and-done is ruining college basketball’, ‘a team of freshmen can’t win a national championship.’ Well, the critics were wrong, and that was almost entirely due to the goliath efforts from Coach Cal and his staff to not only recruit the best but develop the best, all in about six months’ time.
However, in recent years, the gap has been bridged. Blue bloods like Kansas, Duke, and North Carolina have all tried to copy this recipe for success. Some failed, i.e. Kansas (*cough Addidas), and some succeeded, i.e. Duke (and from the testimonies of Doc Rivers and Gilbert Arenas, this might not even be legit for very long).
Since Calipari’s #1 recruiting class in 2015 – Jamal Murray, Isaiah Briscoe, Skal Labissiere, Isaac Humphries, Charles Matthews, Mychal Mulder, and Tai Wynyard – the Wildcats have not topped the charts. So, it would not be brash to say that such a fall from grace from the man who created the system got fans a little out of sorts.
One wish Kentucky fans have been dying to receive is the unmatched recruiting excellence we grew so accustomed to. As a part of his renewed ‘second-ten’ and lifetime contract, Santa Cal and his trusty steeds Barbee, Justus, and Payne went full deck-the-halls, making it their mission to show that the program had not lost its touch.
After blitzing the summer recruiting period, and storming into the fall season, the staff solidified a class with four consensus five-star recruits and two four-stars with major upside, all of whom are top-50 nationally ranked recruits.
Et Voila! Before even wrapping a bow on the final gift, Coach Cal has the nation’s best recruiting class once again – almost as if he had never left.
Kentucky’s 2020 class is well-balanced, athletic, and fiery. The whole list includes five stars and top-30 talents: Terrence Clarke, Devin Askew, BJ Boston, and Isaiah Jackson, as well as the #36 and #44-ranked recruits Lance Ware and Cam’ron Fletcher.
Coach Calipari purposely left scholarship spots on this year’s roster to make room for the monster class that he knew he was getting. If this is any indication of Kentucky”s future success, then I would say the future is bright.
So far, so good for Cats fans on Christmas. Let’s see how the rest of the list holds up.