If Kentucky doesn’t add another player in 2017, they still have a good shot at finishing with the top recruiting class.
Hamidou Diallo (still counts as 2017 recruit), P.J. Washington, Quade Green, Nick Richards, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Shai Alexander are virtually assured of being the No. 1 or 2 class.
Even so, John Calipari is never satisfied, and rightfully so. With 6-8 players set to leave via graduation and the NBA Draft, UK will need as many impact recruits as they can get in one class to ensure next season is another special one.
Mohamed Bamba has the ability to make it special and then some. He’s been at or near the top of UK’s big board for the past year, and that’s not changed heading into the final stretch of Bamba’s recruitment.
The five-star forward revealed this weekend that he’ll be visiting Kentucky and Duke in the coming weeks. He also cut his list to four with Texas and Michigan joining the aforementioned blue bloods.
Bamba even told Zags Blog that he hopes to reach a decision in the coming months, possibly as early as December.
“Yeah, definitely probably toward the end of March, early April,” he said. “I kind of want to get home after spring break. I kind of want to do final visits with the coaches and then make a decision after that.”
Bamba also discussed how hard Diallo and Green have been coming after him.
“They’re coming after me pretty hard,” Bamba said. “I’m going to use Hami as pretty much an informant, because he’s there and he knows what it’s like and he’s going literally straight out of high school to start midseason, so I’m going to use him as a resource.
“He’s (Diallo) been doing that before he committed which was kind of funny to me. I just kept telling him, ‘How you gonna recruit for a school while you’re not even a commit yet or on the campus.’
“But Quade has really been relentless. He’s been following us around campus. It’s annoying.”
Having not one, but two guys in the same class coming hard after another recruit is always a great sign. It still looks like a two-horse race between Duke and Kentucky for Bamba, though he has already visited Texas and Michigan. It’s unclear how much of a factor they really are, and it can’t help that both are enduring seasons that may end without an NCAA Tournament berth.