Basketball Recruiting Update: Bridges Falling Down

Hello KSR friends…I check in to deliver a couple of quick recruiting tidbits, one of which is not good and one of which is more positive. The first is concerning one of my favorite recruits in the 2016 class, Miles Bridges, who at one time was a near certainty to go to Kentucky. Over the past two weeks, he has visited Michigan State and Kentucky and now my confidence in his ending up a Cat has dissipated quite a bit. I am hearing that Bridges had a tremendous visit to Michigan State and they put on the full court press (including visiting with some former Spartans) for he and other top talents. His visit to Kentucky was this past weekend and while it went well, there is a growing feeling that the Spartans may have overtaken the Cats as the leader. Bridges is of course making his decision in two weeks and things can always change. But for a long time, I assumed Bridges (one of my 3-4 favorite players in the class) would end up a Cat. I no longer feel that is certain and after talking to some folks today, if forced to predict as of today, I would bet on Izzo getting the commitment (and finishing up maybe his best class ever).

In better news, I feel good about Kentucky’s chances with star Point Guard De’Aaron Fox. He is the best point guard in America and I think John Calipari has done a great job moving the Cats to the top of the list. It is still a dog fight to get his services, but I like Kentucky’s position much more than I did this summer.

If I were to predict now, I would say that UK’s most likely members of the 2016 class would be Fox, Malik Monk and Wenyen Gabriel (replacing Bridges). These three would join current commitment Sacha Killeya-Jones and likely another player or two in the rest of the class (maybe Bam Adebeyo?) There is still a lot of time for things to move, but for now this looks to me to be the most likely scenario.