Fresh off landing a five-star recruit, UK’s Mark Pope hosts another top prospect for visit

Kentucky basketball is already well positioned when it comes to the 2025 recruiting class, with Mark Pope having landed recent commitments from five-star guard Jasper Johnson and four-star center Malachi Moreno.

These commitments came before the fall official visit season meaningfully got underway, which means plenty of highly touted prospects are still set to make trips to Lexington in the coming weeks to evaluate UK as a potential college basketball destination, with Johnson and Moreno already in the fold.

UK’s on-campus recruiting efforts this fall will begin in earnest Friday, when five-star power forward Caleb Wilson takes an official visit to check out the Wildcats.

Ranked by the 247Sports Composite as a five-star recruit and the No. 4 overall prospect in the 2025 class, the 6-foot-9, 205-pound Wilson has UK included among his final 12 college options.

Wilson’s list of college finalists also includes Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Central Florida, Duke, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Ohio State, Oregon, Southern California and Tennessee.

Wilson, who is from Atlanta, will have his weekend visit to UK coincide with a major Kentucky athletics event: UK football is hosting No. 1 Georgia on Saturday night at Kroger Field.

Mark Pope has ramped up recruitment of Caleb Wilson

Wilson has been a longtime Kentucky recruit, and he’s a prospect whose recruitment by the Wildcats has spanned several coaching staffs. Wilson first picked up a Kentucky basketball scholarship offer in late June 2023 when John Calipari led the UK program.

Kentucky pursued Wilson aggressively while Calipari was the coach in Lexington, with Wilson visiting last October for UK’s Big Blue Madness event at Rupp Arena.

“I’ve always been a Kentucky fan,” Wilson told the Herald-Leader in August 2023. “I’ve never had a dream school but I’ve always liked Kentucky, I like Rupp Arena. (It’s a) big stage.”

Following the offseason coaching change from Calipari to Pope, UK appeared to be losing ground in Wilson’s recruitment. In May, during the first live recruiting period of Pope’s tenure at UK, Wilson didn’t list the Wildcats among the schools that were pursuing him the hardest.

But UK had a front-row seat (during live recruiting periods) to virtually all of Wilson’s AAU games with the ultra-talented Nightrydas Elite squad on the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League circuit. That Nightrydas Elite team went on to win the 17-and-under Peach Jam championship, with Wilson being named the Peach Jam Defensive MVP.

Given this, it proved to be just a matter of time before Pope inserted Kentucky back into Wilson’s recruitment.

“My catch-and-shoot game has gotten way better,” Wilson said in May about his basketball development. “Really just playing off the catch. I really wanted to work on that, and I feel like it’s getting better the more and more I’m able to do it, and really defense.”

Kentucky’s newfound commitment to making Wilson a priority recruit was on display last week. On Sept. 4, Pope and three UK assistants were on hand to watch Wilson during a morning workout in Atlanta.

Following Wilson’s visit to UK this week, a flurry of recruiting activity will continue for the Cats into the fall. Later this month, two other five-star recruits — point guard Mikel Brown Jr. and center Chris Cenac — will be on UK’s campus.

Big Blue Madness on Oct. 11 will, as always, be a key recruiting event for the Wildcats ahead of Pope’s first season as head coach. The already-committed Moreno and five-star power forward Tounde Yessoufou are expected to be among the visitors for that event.

Kentucky basketball offers scholarships to 2026, 2027 recruits

Recent days have seen the Kentucky men’s basketball program offer scholarships to recruiting targets in both the class of 2026 and the class of 2027.

On Wednesday afternoon, Tajh Ariza — a five-star small forward prospect in the 2026 recruiting class — reported a scholarship offer from UK. The 6-foot-8, 180-pound Ariza is the son of former NBA champion and longtime professional player Trevor Ariza.

The younger Ariza is from Los Angeles and is ranked by the 247Sports Composite as the No. 6 overall recruit in the 2026 class.

When announcing his scholarship offer from UK, Ariza gave a specific shoutout to new UK assistant coach Jason Hart. Given Hart’s connections to both the state of California and the NBA, it comes as no surprise that Hart will be helping lead UK’s pursuit of Ariza.

Compared to the Calipari era at UK, Pope has shown that he’s willing to offer recruits a Kentucky scholarship at a much earlier stage of their basketball development. To this point, UK basketball now also has its first scholarship offers out in the 2027 recruiting class.

The first of these offers went to Baba Oladotun, a 6-foot-9, 175-pound small forward from Maryland. UK joins the likes of Indiana, Louisville, Syracuse, Tennessee, Texas and UCLA, among other schools, that have extended a scholarship offer to Oladotun, who plays for Team Durant on the Nike EYBL circuit.

Oladotun reported his UK scholarship offer Monday night.

Also this week, Kentucky extended a scholarship offer to Obinna Ekezie Jr., a 7-foot center in the 2027 recruiting class. The 220-pound Ekezie plays his prep basketball at California’s Prolific Prep.

Ekezie reported his scholarship offer from UK on Thursday afternoon.

Hart is expected to also help lead UK’s recruiting efforts with Ekezie, who also holds scholarship offers from the likes of California and Houston, among other schools.

Ekezie’s father, who has the same name, played college basketball at Maryland in the late 1990s and was a second-round selection in the 1999 NBA draft. The elder Ekezie played in 143 career NBA games.

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