Kentucky head coach John Calipari and his staff have certainly landed several of the “bigger fish” in recruiting over the last decade. However, when you shoot for big, you sometimes miss out on a star or two. Recently, Kentucky Sports Radio took a look at who the five biggest “misses” might be.

First on their list was Xavier Henry, who was in the same class as John Wall and Demarcus Cousins. His decision to play at Kansas, according to a recent story, allowed Kentucky the chance to land Wall who is unarguably one of the biggest names to ever play at Kentucky. Next was, to no surprise, Zion Williamson of the 2018 class who faded Clemson and Kentucky at the last minute for Duke. James Wiseman was listed third, who of course was in last year’s class and spent all of five minutes at Memphis.

Andrew Wiggins (fourth, 2013 class to Kansas) and Jaylen Brown (fifth, 2015 class to Cal) rounded out the top-five. As Wiggins and Brown were both highly-recruited high school players, neither were exactly season-changers for their college teams. Wiggins and Kansas bowed out in the third round of March Madness to Stanford while Brown and Cal lost in the first round to Hawaii.

There’s of course the “what if” factor that applies in to all five of these players, considering how well each could have done at Kentucky with the elite talent and coaching staff. However, there’s also the reality that Kentucky (aside from Zion’s commitment) has been better off without these players. Because John Calipari and his players have been that good.

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