Caleb Wilson sets timeline for list cut, final decision

A decision is coming for five-star forward Caleb Wilson, Kentucky’s top remaining target as Mark Pope looks to wrap up his 2025 recruiting class after signing Jasper Johnson, Acaden Lewis and Malachi Moreno. How quickly could a commitment come together for the nation’s No. 5 overall prospect?

First, he’s got to cut down his list to five. That’s coming in the very near future — potentially imminently.

“It’ll be in the next one to two weeks — might be this week, actually,” he told KSR. “I want to watch some more basketball, see what I like, look at coaching styles and go ahead and cut it down.”

Excitement is building for Wilson as one of the next big-time recruits off the board, coaches and fans giving their final pitches as he weighs his options. The spotlight is growing stronger and centering on the dynamic two-way threat with superstar upside, and he feels it.

It’s something he embraces, knowing you don’t get many opportunities like this one in life. He has no choice but to make the most of it.

“I mean, this is the last decision I’ll be able to make for my future in my entire basketball career. Really, that’s how I see it,” Wilson said. “If I’m fortunate enough to go to the NBA, I’m going to get drafted. It’s not going to be my choice. So I definitely feel the anticipation with the fans always texting me, DMing me, ‘This is where home is, this is what you should look for.’ And sometimes it’s even funny to me, but you know, it’s really surreal. I never thought I’d be in this place.”

Wilson says it’s ‘definitely’ Kentucky and North Carolina fans pushing the hardest to make their presence felt. A couple of Ohio State fans have shown love recently, “but UK is crazy and UNC is really crazy too.” Georgia Tech, UCF, USC, Tennessee and Oregon are some of the other schools fighting to make that final list cut and potentially earn his commitment. He had a trip to Arkansas scheduled this weekend for what was expected to be his final official visit, but that has since been canceled and will not be rescheduled.

BREAKING: Five-Star Plus+ Caleb Wilson no longer visiting Arkansas this weekend

READ: https://t.co/SlcUH7PSWp pic.twitter.com/6mZU8K6KyN

— Jamie Shaw (@JamieShaw5) November 14, 2024

How quickly could a decision come? There is a window he’s got his eye on that stretches essentially from now to January, keeping the door open for a commitment to close out the Nov. 13-20 early signing period while also acknowledging it’ll probably extend past that.

“If it’s in the early signing period, it’ll be at the very end,” Wilson said. “… I feel like it’ll be in December or January.”

There is a method to his madness, the five-star prospect not intentionally dragging things out for the sake of doing so. He simply wants to see the schools he’s considering more closely, watching the coaching and playing styles as regular season competition ramps up. The way players are used and the way they respond to coaching will give him a better idea of the environment he wants to join.

“I definitely want to be able to narrow it down based on how I see the coaches coach, and how the players play, how they respond to their criticism,” he told KSR.

Take Mark Pope and the Wildcats for instance. He got to see his coaching style and how his players developed over the course of a season at BYU, but things are different in Lexington. It’s intriguing, sure, but the sample size is still extremely small. He wants added confidence before pushing his chips in on Pope and Kentucky — or any coach and school, for that matter.

“I haven’t committed in this early signing period because Coach Pope is a newer coach, so I want to see him coach. I want to see it and pay attention to it with my own two eyes,” Wilson said. “I watched him coach last year at BYU, look at Synergy, but it’s not Kentucky. I want to see his coaching style and see how it’s applied to his players. I’ve been to a practice before, so I’ve definitely seen that, but I want to see what that’s like on the court. I want to see that for every coach.

“As your decision comes, you pay more and more attention to the coaches you like and you have to see, ‘This is something I like’ or ‘This is something I don’t like.’ I wasn’t paying attention like I am this year, last year.”

He says he’s looking for a ‘very intense defensive team, a switchable defense’ on one end of the floor while also prioritizing off-ball movement on the other — “I just look for every player on the court moving and not a lot of standing,” Wilson added. Coaches play to their personnel, obviously, but those things are constants within a system no matter what the roster looks like.

What will be the final determining factor in his recruitment, though, the moment it’ll hit him that one school is home? The 6-9 forward out of Atlanta knows exactly when that’ll come.

“That will happen when I see something I like a lot from a coach. I talk to players on the team and they give me similar a answer in what a coach is giving them, how a coach is pushing them and also seeing how the team plays consistently,” Wilson told KSR. “The thing I love about college basketball is conference play. I feel like it’s the most truth-telling time of the season. You go against people you’re going to play once or twice — more than likely twice. You’re seeing them and watching them knowing, ‘I have to be better than you, I have to execute. I have to do this.’

“You already know, you’ve seen it. You’ve seen me, you’ve played me before. When you’re watching a team play like that, you can get a feel for how the players feel. How is this coach pushing them? What makes these players go? What makes the coach go? That’s definitely going to be important for me.”

Kentucky’s statement win over Duke this week couldn’t have hurt — he was in attendance rooting for the Cats, after all.