Kentucky basketball losing ground in recruitment of 5-star guard

Kentucky basketball head coach Mark Pope has been prioritizing two recruitments in the 2025 class since he took over in Lexington and both appear to slowly be coming to a close.

Between 5-star guard Jasper Johnson and high-end 4-star center Malachi Moreno, the amount of times both players have taken visits to Kentucky is over a dozen. They've been on campus together, even, over the last few months.

While Moreno seems to be trending more towards Pope and Kentucky, Johnson may not be.

The local product seems to be leaning elsewhere in his recruitment as Kentucky appears to be on the outside looking in.

“This has become a two-man race,” 247Sports national analyst Travis Branham said of Johnson’s recruitment. “There’s been a lot of smoke out there on social media, but I would not buy into it. This is a race between Alabama and North Carolina.

"At this point, I would classify Kentucky, although they are the hometown team, I would classify them as a distant third behind Alabama and North Carolina."

Johnson had Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisville and Arkansas as his final five schools -- but it appears there is a clear heirarchy.

Johnson is originally from Woodford County (Ky.) but transferred to national powerhouse program Link Academy (Mo.) last year and then announced last month that he would be heading to Overtime Elite (Ga.) for his final season.

Mark Pope has made Johnson a priority target since taking over four months ago. He showed that when he traveled to the FIBA U18 AmeriCup in Argentina earlier this summer to watch Johnson in action. 

While it appears the top-10 guard will be going elsewhere, it's important to remember you can't win these recruitments unless you're consistently in them. This will be a different recruiting style than John Calipari ... and that's okay.

Something tells me Mark Pope will be just fine moving forward.