Cade Cunningham cuts list and updates recruitment

Cade Cunningham is one of the best in all of high school hoops, and he just entered the next phase of his recruitment.

On Thursday, Cunningham announced his final five, and the Kentucky Wildcats made the cut along with the Florida Gators, North Carolina Tar Heels, Oklahoma State Cowboys and Washington Huskies.

Cunningham also gave a brief update on his recruitment to Rivals, which included why UK is still on his list.

“That is a big, prestigious school,” said Cunningham. “They put out a ton of top pros and they win.”

Cunningham also said he hopes to have his recruitment wrapped up in time for the fall signing period.

“I want to sign by the early signing period. I want to be done with it by then and take all of my visits before then,” he said. “No visits are lined up yet. I am going to talk to my five schools and figure it out.”

The five-star forward out of Texas is ranked No. 2 overall in the 2020 class by 247 Sports composite. He is actually ranked No. 2 in all of high school hoops, regardless of class, by The Athletic, trailing only rising phenom Emoni Bates.

So as you can imagine, everyone wants Cunningham, but only one school will get him, and it almost certainly will be Oklahoma State. Once the Cowboys hired Cade’s brother as an assistant coach, it became a near-lock that he would eventually land in Stillwater for his one season of college basketball.

The good news for the Wildcats is they still have a shot at landing a monsterous backcourt in Jalen Green and Josh Christopher to pair with Brandon Boston. UK’s efforts in getting that dream trio have seemingly taken off since Cunningham’s brother was hired and John Calipari likely realized the talented guard wasn’t going to end up in Lexington.