Kentucky Reaches Out to 2017 Guard Mark Smith

With Quade Green, Shai Alexander, Hamidou Diallo, and Brad Calipari as the only guards on the roster for 2017, Big Blue Nation has some concerns about guard depth. John Calipari may be working to answer those concerns as this news broke this morning:

Andre McMurray is the director for the Jets Ramey United team based out of Illinois. Mark Smith is a member of the Jets and he’s also a four star 2017 basketball recruit.

On 247, Smith is listed as the twenty second point guard in the class and the fifth best player out of the state of Illinois. He has offers from Indiana, Illinois, Butler, and Ohio State. Kansas, Auburn, and California have been showing interest.

Smith was even named Illinois Mr. Basketball for 2017. Scout and Rivals also has him listed as a four-star recruit.

For the moment, Smith is uncommitted and this is at the early stages of recruiting, but one can see that John Calipari is moving to add depth to his backcourt. Many wondered if he would go the JUCO or fifth year transfer route, but neither situation is appealing to Cal.

There are 13 scholarships for college basketball. Right now the freshman class is comprised of Diallo, Green, Alexander, Jarred Vanderbilt, PJ Washington, and Nick RIchards. The players from last year’s team that are likely to stay are Wenyen Gabriel, Sacha Killeya-Jones, Isaac Humphries, and Tai Wynyard. If Cal does pursue Smith and ultimately offers him, there will still be room for both Kevin Knox and Mohamed Bamba, the two elite recruits left considering Kentucky.

Again, this is very early but the recruitment of Shai Alexander moved rapidly once he was offered.