Mark Pope is making a heavy push for players within the transfer portal, but that hasn’t stopped him from recruiting high school players as well.
Top-15 recruit Will Riley was one of the Kentucky Wildcats’ early targets in the class of 2025 under John Calipari. It would appear Coach Pope is keeping Kentucky in the mix for the 5-star small forward.
Per On3’s Joe Tipton, Riley has cut his list to five, and Kentucky remains in the hunt, as are Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks. Tipton also reports that Riley plans to visit Kentucky in the near future.
Riley does not publicly hold a scholarship offer from Kentucky.
The 6-foot-8, 178-pound Riley plays for The Phelps School in Pennsylvania and holds scholarship offers from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Michigan, UCLA, Villanova, Oregon, and Texas Tech, among others. He’s ranked 15th overall in 2025 and third among small forwards via 247 Sports Composite.
Will be one to watch for.
Another one of the top players in the 2025 class is starting to hear from Kentucky as Pope looks to build his first real high school recruiting class in Lexington.
Nate Ament is a 5-star prospect ranked 18th overall and fifth among power forwards in his class, according to 247 Sports Composite.
The 6-foot-9 forward from Virginia updated his recruitment in an interview with Jamie Shaw of On3.
When talking about Kentucky, Ament noted that Pope recruited him a little bit while he was at BYU, but now he is trying to build that relationship to potentially get him at Kentucky.
“They recruited me a little bit when they were at BYU. Now they’re at Kentucky they are trying to get to know me and they are trying to get on as many calls with me as possible. We are in the process of building that relationship. I’m not going to lie, I haven’t watched too much BYU. But they like my versatility, that I can shoot and pass, and my length. I know I can adapt to almost any system and fit in perfectly.”
It will be interesting to see the classes that Pope is able to build now that he has the stage of a program like Kentucky. Landing a guy like Ament would be a great start to his era in Lexington.
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