Top basketball recruit Jasper Johnson is ready to commit. Will he pick UK basketball?

Soon, a five-star college basketball recruit in the class of 2025 will make his college commitment.

And not only is the prospect in question someone that Kentucky basketball fans have been tracking for several years, it’s also a player that Mark Pope and the Wildcats are now expected to land.

On Sept. 5, Jasper Johnson — the 6-foot-4, 175-pound shooting guard from Central Kentucky who will play his senior season at Overtime Elite in Atlanta — will make his college choice.

Johnson — whose father is Dennis Johnson, the former Harrodsburg, UK and NFL football player who now serves as the head football coach and athletic director at Woodford County (where Jasper began his basketball career) — is considered among the best prospects in the 2025 class.

Ranked by the 247Sports Composite as a five-star recruit and the No. 10 overall player in his class, Johnson’s recruitment has featured plenty of twists, turns and coaching changes. Officially, Johnson is down to a top-five list that includes Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisville and North Carolina.

Realistically though, it’s Alabama, Kentucky and UNC who are on Johnson’s short list for a commitment. Johnson will be making his college choice on Sept. 5 during an event at Woodford County, his former school.

From that group, Kentucky is viewed as the favorite to land a commitment.

Previously, Alabama was the favorite to get Johnson, a left-handed guard with deep shooting range and experience playing in on-ball and off-ball environments.

How did Kentucky move into the lead in Johnson’s recruitment? And what would landing Johnson mean for Pope’s 2025 recruiting class at UK, which already includes in-state center Malachi Moreno?

With Johnson’s commitment date now known, here’s a refresher on his recruitment, his playing style and his importance as an elite homegrown basketball player who appears poised to play for the Cats in college.

Jasper Johnson’s recruitment history, timeline

Following a breakout sophomore season at Woodford County — during which Johnson led the Yellow Jackets to the semifinals of the Sweet 16 state tournament — Kentucky’s pursuit of the talented in-state guard began in earnest.

Former UK head coach John Calipari extended Johnson a scholarship offer in May 2023. In January, Kentucky made a top-10 list cut for Johnson. In February, Johnson took an official visit to UK.

In the following months, several coaching changes took center stage as Johnson’s recruitment developed.

Chief among these was Calipari leaving UK for Arkansas and Kentucky opting to hire Pope, the former BYU head coach and a 1996 national champion at UK.

Also this offseason, Johnson opted to change schools. After playing at Woodford County through his sophomore season, Johnson played the 2023-24 high school year at Link Academy, a prep school based in Missouri. Johnson’s head coach at Link Academy, Bill Armstrong, left this offseason to become an assistant coach at Baylor.

In July, Johnson announced he would be spending the 2024-25 season at Overtime Elite, the Atlanta-based league that was also the final high school stop for ex-Cat Rob Dillingham.

As Pope and his new UK coaching staff began to prioritize 2025 recruits after building a college roster for next season, it became obvious that Johnson was near the top of Pope’s list.

In recent months, Pope and other UK coaches traveled to watch Johnson play in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) in Indiana and South Carolina, at the USA Basketball Men’s Under-18 National Team training camp in Colorado and at the FIBA Men’s Under-18 AmeriCup in Argentina.

In late July, Johnson revealed his final five list of schools with Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisville, and North Carolina making the cut.

But Calipari’s departure loomed large in Johnson’s recruitment. Had Calipari stayed at UK, the expectation was for the Wildcats to be the favorites to land Johnson.

With Calipari gone, plenty of basketball analysts, including David Sisk of Rivals, pegged Alabama as the leader for Johnson.

Even as the Crimson Tide led the way, Sisk told the Herald-Leader that shifting information was a staple of covering Johnson’s recruitment.

“I don’t ever remember a recruitment with as much polar opposite information as this one,” said Sisk, who covers both Kentucky and North Carolina basketball for Rivals. “You would hear some people say, ‘Kentucky’s making a run,’ and then they would say they’re not making a run. ‘Well, North Carolina’s out of it. North Carolina is tied for the lead. Alabama is still in the lead. Alabama’s fading.’”

The changing information extended to everything from perception of specific coaches to interest in a monetary name, image and likeness (NIL) package.

As recently as as a few weeks ago, the Crimson Tide were still considered the likely choice for Johnson, with Kentucky trailing in third.

“One thing I heard they really liked, the big difference that gave Alabama the edge … Nate Oats. Although it’s not nearly as extensive as John Calipari, (Oats) has proven that he can take guys and develop first-round draft picks out of them,” Sisk said. “So that that was his edge.”

Then, things changed fast.

Kentucky not only edged its way back into Johnson’s recruiting picture, but the Wildcats are now widely viewed as the leader to land Johnson.

A whole host of recruiting analysts are now predicting that Johnson will commit to the Wildcats on Sept. 5.

This includes Travis Branham of 247Sports, who has an all-time 93% hit rate when it comes to predicting schools for top basketball recruits.

Mark Pope, UK move into lead position for Jasper Johnson

Kentucky fans should be feeling good about UK’s chances of securing a commitment from Johnson.

For Sisk, the fact that UK is now in a position to get Johnson is evidence of some major strides that have been made when it comes to putting together an NIL package for a player of Johnson’s caliber.

Sisk said UK’s NIL offer to Johnson was “probably a big issue” in his decision to go from an Alabama lean to a likely Kentucky commit.

“It shows now that Kentucky, the coach, the administration, the boosters, you know, they’re arm and arm, they’re in lock step here to do what it takes to recruit,” Sisk said. “I think that’s more important, much more important now than a coach being able to go in somebody’s living room and just wow the family. That used to work, and I still think maybe there’s a little bit to that, but that’s not pertinent in 2024 nearly as much as it used to be.”

While Moreno — Kentucky’s first class of 2025 addition out of Great Crossing High School in Georgetown — had a different recruitment than Johnson, Sisk sees parallels in the ways Pope has been able to enter a recruitment at a late stage and make an impact.

“Malachi Moreno, when Mark Pope got there, he was a strong Indiana lean. He was able to get him,” Sisk said. “… Jasper Johnson, I have no doubt he was a strong Alabama lean, and they were able to flip him. So, (Pope’s) been able to do some work to get some pretty heavy hitters.”

If Kentucky completes the process of flipping Johnson from being an Alabama lean to a Kentucky commit, it would also be a statement of intent for Pope’s recruiting ability early in his UK coaching tenure.

“Some people will look at this from the outside and say, ‘OK, he stepped into a great situation, because he’s got two in-state kids who are basically five-star players — top-20 players — and that’s not happened in Kentucky for a while. So he should get these guys. He’s stepped into a great spot.’ But my take is … Man, he had to fight for them,” Sisk said.

“When you go head-to-head with Nate Oats, there’s not a bigger shark on recruiting trail out there. … So you’ve gone against the best and really kind of flipped a guy from the best. So I think he’s done a tremendous job.”

Adding Jasper Johnson would be huge recruiting win for Kentucky

With Johnson expected to join Kentucky’s 2025 recruiting class in the near future, UK can now claim to be one of the early leaders when it comes to next year’s team recruiting rankings.

In the space of just a few weeks, the Wildcats are likely to have commitments from the players ranked No. 10 overall (Johnson) and No. 27 overall (Moreno) in the 2025 group, per the 247Sports Composite.

This is meaningful in a number of ways.

First, Pope is now in position to score consecutive recruiting wins for elite players from the commonwealth.

Kentucky’s current run of in-state recruiting success, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1980s, is set to continue. Pope is primed to reap rewards from this, both on the court in future seasons and from a fan engagement perspective, which includes UK’s NIL efforts.

Then, there’s the fact both Johnson and Moreno represent early commitments from players in the 2025 recruiting class, which is moving at a glacial pace when it comes to players choosing schools.

According to the 247Sports Composite rankings, only four players in the top 30 have already committed. They are Darius Acuff Jr. (No. 8, Arkansas), Sadiq White Jr. (No. 22, Syracuse), Moreno (No. 27, UK) and Jamier Jones (No. 30, Providence).

Only two schools have commitments from multiple players inside the top 80 of the 247Sports Composite rankings: Iowa State (No. 62 Jamarion Batemon and No. 78 Xzavion Mitchell) and Ole Miss (No. 41 Tylis Jordan and No. 79 Patton Pinkins).

It might be early, especially for this class, but Kentucky would skyrocket to the top of the 2025 team recruiting rankings with the addition of Johnson.

Having both Johnson and Moreno in the fold by early September will also give UK a boost entering the fall official visit period. Kentucky is set to host several top 2025 recruits for official visits this fall, including five-star power forward Nate Ament starting Wednesday.

With key recruits already committed in both the backcourt and frontcourt, UK has a foundation to build from when pitching recruits on their potential roles at Kentucky.

“You don’t want a situation where the perception is, you’ve got a really good player coming in here, and he looks at it and he says, ‘You know, I like everything, but … they’ve not signed anybody. They don’t have any recruiting momentum,’” Sisk said. “I don’t want to be like (2023 UK recruit) Rob Dillingham and commit to North Carolina State. And I look up, and I have no help. There’s nobody there. And then I opt out. You don’t want that.”

The consensus seems to be that Pope’s up-tempo offense, a five-out attack that emphasizes spacing and shooting, would fit well with Johnson’s game.

“Johnson would likely thrive in a college system that involves getting out and running in transition, attempting a high volume of 3s and utilizing screens on and off the ball to open up windows for their guards,” Zach Welch, an analyst for Pro Insight Basketball, told the Herald-Leader.

Pope also has the freedom to go larger with his 2025 recruiting class due to the way the current Kentucky basketball roster is built.

Seven players on UK’s 2024-25 team are in their final year of NCAA eligibility, which means a mixture of portal players and members of what’s considered a strong 2025 class will be coming to Lexington next summer to fill those spots.

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