As the final seconds ticked down, the tension could be felt. Not just from the 24,000 fans who would file out of Rupp Arena, but from those on Twitter, message boards and sports talk radio shows.
The scoreboards at Rupp Arena on Jan. 20 showed Florida had walked away with a 66-64 victory. The youngest team in college basketball had dropped to 14-5 after losing its second straight game. Two days later Kentucky would fall out of the Top 25 for the first time in four years.
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Yet for the Wildcats, the loss to the Gators was only the second most stinging defeat of the day. Just minutes after the game tipped off, they experienced a bigger, seemingly more crippling blow. Zion Williamson, the third-ranked player in the Class of 2018, had made his college announcement. For weeks it had been assumed that Clemson, which is located a short drive from Williamson’s hometown of Spartanburg, S.C., was the favorite for his services. And most assumed that if Williamson didn’t select the home-state Tigers, Kentucky would be the destination.
Instead, in a move that shocked everyone, Williamson pulled out a royal blue hat with a block “D” in the middle and announced he would attend Duke. It was a move virtually no one expected. Williamson’s decision was especially shocking considering the Blue Devils already had commitments from two similarly skilled wings. Canadian import R.J. Barrett and Pennsylvania product Cameron Reddish also were the top two players in the 2018 class, giving Duke an unprecedented recruiting haul.
“It was,” said someone within the Kentucky program, “not a very good day.”
To fully understand the context of Williamson’s decision, you have to go back nearly a decade. The day was April 1, 2009, the location the Joe Craft Center on the University of Kentucky campus. On that morning John Calipari was introduced as the school’s basketball coach, and when he stepped to the podium he made few promises. He didn’t guarantee any number of national championships. But one thing he did promise was that he’d clean up in recruiting, that he’d bring in “the best of the best,” as he called it.
To his credit, Calipari has largely delivered on that promise. From 2009 through 2015, Kentucky signed the top class in the country in all but one season, according to 247 Sports. And the one class that tumbled down the rankings to No. 2 was arguably his best ever. The 2014 group featured three future lottery picks (Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and Trey Lyles) as well as Tyler Ulis, a future SEC Player of the Year.
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However, as the years have passed, Kentucky’s hold atop the recruiting rankings has loosened, with one school in particular making an impact while essentially mimicking the Wildcats’ recruiting game plan. That would be Duke. After dabbling with recruiting one-and-done talent for a few years, the Blue Devils jumped in with both feet before the 2015 season. Three freshmen started that year, and Duke won the national championship.
In 2016, the Blue Devils signed four All-Americas, including three (Jayson Tatum, Harry Giles and Marques Bolden) that Kentucky coveted. In 2017 they landed four more one-and-done type talents, headlined by the surprise reclassification of Marvin Bagley III. Then there is the monstrous 2018 class, with the top three players and four of the top 10 overall.
“It really is unprecedented in the modern era,” recruiting analyst Andrew Slater says of Duke’s three-for-three sweep.
Was there any doubt who had emerged as the best recruiter in the game? It was Mike Krzyzewski.
Since the Williamson news, Calipari has taken on a more active role in recruiting, harkening back to his early days in Lexington. When the Wildcats showed interest in Brandon Williams, a former Arizona commit, it was Calipari – not an assistant – who reached out to his high school coach, according to a source. Calipari’s hands-on approach is already paying off. The Wildcats are largely perceived to be the front-runner for the top player in the 2019 class, James Wiseman a 6-foot-10 forward from Nashville. (Complicating matters is that Wiseman’s former high school and AAU coach is Penny Hardaway, who recently accepted the Memphis job.) In mid-March, Kentucky received a commitment from D.J. Jeffries, a top-30 player from Olive Branch, Miss.
On Monday, Wildcats fans awoke to the news that forward E.J Montgomery, the top remaining player in the Class of 2018, was headed to Lexington. The one-time Auburn commit chose the Wildcats over North Carolina and yes, Duke, among many suitors. On Tuesday, Calipari doubled-down, locking in 2019 point guard prospect Ashton Hagans, who is working toward graduating this summer and reclassifying for 2018. For those keeping score, Calipari has landed three five-star commitments in the last month.
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The recent success shows that while any sweeping argument about who’s No. 1 in recruiting makes for great Twitter debate, the topic is much more nuanced. Kids pick schools for a variety reasons, be it style of play, how the staff develops talent or simply whether the player grew up rooting for a certain school.
“These are just the ebbs and flows of recruiting,” Slater says.
When Hagans committed, he called Kentucky his “dream school.” In Montgomery’s case, the Wildcats were never a perceived favorite. But once the staff explained how he could fit in with the pieces they had, he was sold.
“Calipari fits his system to the strength of his players,” says Jarvis Hayes, Montgomery’s AAU coach. “Look at Coach Cal’s history. Look at the type of guys he’s recruited and the type of guys who’ve had success under his tutelage at Kentucky. E.J. fits that mold.”
In the bigger picture, it is silly to say Calipari took back the mantle of the game’s best recruiter because he got a few big-time commitments. That’s no different than saying it was silly to call Krzyzewski the undisputed best recruiter as he signed his own big-time prospects.
It’s especially silly when you consider that Calipari never really lost his recruiting touch. Even in the years where Krzyzewski supposedly passed Calipari, Kentucky signed a 2016 class that produced three lottery picks and a 2017 class with six of the top 25 prospects in America, according to some services. Kentucky also won a head-to-head battle with Duke for Kevin Knox, this season’s SEC Freshman of the Year.
“I don’t know that one passed the other,” Slater says. “They’re on a level of their own.”
As Slater points out, the Calipari-Krzyzewski debate is probably the wrong one to have altogether.
“The question to me,” Slater says, “is who is No. 3?”
(Top photo by Dale Zanine/USA TODAY Sports)
