2021 top-five prospect Patrick Baldwin Jr. cuts list, includes Kentucky

Photo: 247Sports

2021 five-star guard and top-three prospect Patrick Baldwin Jr. is down to ten schools, and Kentucky is one of them.

This evening, Baldwin announced he would be officially choosing between Duke, Georgetown, Kentucky, Michigan, Milwaukee, North Carolina, Northwestern, UCLA, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Here was the announcement:

Top ten 🏁 pic.twitter.com/Mt7G7mftWr

— Patrick Baldwin Jr. (@_pbaldwin23) May 10, 2020

Baldwin Jr., the No. 3 prospect in the class of 2021, is just one of two small forwards in the class – Jonathan Kuminga being the other – with scholarship offers from John Calipari.

Back in January, the 6-foot-9 forward out of Sussex, WI told Eric Bossi of Rivals.com that he was Kentucky was “really high up there” on his list of favorite schools.

“I love Coach (John) Calipari and I love the guys they’ve targeted,” Baldwin told Bossi. “I like talking with Paolo (Banchero), (Kennedy) Chandler and I like the guys they are trying to build with in that class. At the end of the day they will probably be in my end list even though I haven’t released it. I think Kentucky is really high up there with me right now.”

In a recent interview with Corey Evans of Rivals.com, Baldwin doubled down on his interest in Kentucky, saying the coaching staff has done a great job pitching the school’s production and development of elite talent.

“Their pitch has just been a lot of things that we knew going in which was that they produce a lot of NBA talent, play in the SEC, they have really good teams and talent in that league,” Baldwin said. “A really big pitch is that they know that I am really talented but if you come to Kentucky, that they aren’t guaranteeing you anything.

“If you want to come here, you have to work and push yourself to be the best that you can be on your own and they will push you along the way but they aren’t going to promise anyone anything because they want you to come in with a good class and be alongside a lot of other good players and really, it is just going to be like a pro-style practice where they have scouts there and at almost all of their games and it is just going to be about who wants it more which is what Kentucky has always been about with all the prospects they have recruited.”

Duke has been seen as the longtime leader, though Northwestern and Kentucky have also been picking up steam with the five-star prospect in recent months.

Check out some of his recent highlights below:

Will UK be able to pull off the upset with the five-star prospect?