KSR Today: Pope talks Duke win, Brooks lands first 2025 commit

Good morning, folks! We’re all still in the process of coming off the high from Tuesday night’s win in Atlanta. It’s been a wild and exciting 48 hours within the Kentucky men’s basketball program. We’re going to keep the party going a little bit longer too. Head coach Mark Pope will hold his weekly media session later today to speak with reporters. We’re expecting philosophical quotes mixed in with X’s and O’s breakdowns that I only half understand.

Right before Pope, we’ll listen to women’s basketball head coach Kenny Brooks, who has Kentucky coming off a 76-42 win over Wofford from earlier this week. In-state rival Louisville comes to Memorial Coliseum this weekend. Brooks’ first big opportunity as head coach is almost here.

As always, stay tuned to everything KSR for immediate updates on everything Pope and Brooks have to say.

But they’re not the only head coaches we’ll hear from today. Mark Stoops will close out his weekly media obligations with his usual Thursday press conference. He has yet to say one way or the other which quarterback Kentucky will roll out on Saturday against Murray State (although I dropped some scoop on that very subject over on KSBoard last night). Perhaps he’ll tip his hand today? This weekend will be more of a get-right game for the Wildcats before closing the regular season against a pair of ranked teams in No. 3 Texas and No. 19 Louisville. Expect more clock for the backups in the second half as Kentucky hopefully runs up the score.

Now, let’s dive into the rest of this morning’s news and notes.

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Kenny lands his first 2025 commit

Kenny Brooks has No. 20 Kentucky women’s basketball off to a 3-0 start with a hugely important home showdown against No. 18 Louisville set for this Saturday. He’ll enter that game having just landed his first 2025 high school commit. Yesterday afternoon, Kaelyn Carroll announced her commitment to Kentucky.

At 6-foot-2, Carroll’s positional versatility is one of her strengths. The native of Massachusetts can play two through five and can shoot from deep just as well as she can dig her way into the post. Villanova, Minnesota, Florida State, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia Tech were among her finalists prior to choosing UK. ESPN ranks Carroll as a five-star prospect and the No. 15 overall recruit in the 2025 cycle.

Landing a five-star, out-of-state recruit for your first commitment? Pretty impressive from Coach Brooks.

A trio of fresh podcasts in your feed

The time spent in between UK games is always tough. We still have until Saturday before football and women’s basketball returns. The men’s basketball team is off until Tuesday. But you can’t use a lack of KSR content as an excuse for mid-week boredom. We rolled out a tripleheader of podcasts last night to cover all the bases.

• The Sources Say crew of Jack Pilgrim and Shawn Smith broke down Kentucky’s win over Duke. Jack was at State Farm Arena to take in all the action, so he had a first-hand view of the Wildcats’ comeback win. It was all smiles for these two as they relived the first big win of the Pope era.
• The 11 Personnel team of Nick Roush and Adam Luckett had plenty to discuss as well despite Kentucky having not played since two Saturdays ago. Stoops has made the talking points easy at this point. The guys go into Stoops’ retirement denial and missing his radio show, the 85-scholarship rule, who will play quarterback for the ‘Cats against Murray State, and much more.
• Finally, the Memorial Memo duo of Phoenix Stevens and Katie Hutchison dropped a fresh episode to go in-depth on the addition of Kaelyn Carroll for the 2025-26 season. They also touch on Kentucky’s most recent win over Wofford and look ahead to Saturday afternoon’s game rivalry game with the Cardinals.

You can watch/listen to all three shows over on the KSR YouTube page, or wherever you get your podcasts through streaming.

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KSR Game of the Week

Round two of the Kentucky high school football playoffs begins tomorrow night. After a series of blowouts in round one, this week’s slate is much better. With that in mind, we’re taking the KSR Game of the Week to Union, KY as the No. 10 Ryle Raiders (9-2) host the visiting No. 13 St. Xavier Tigers (7-4) on Friday night at 7:00 p.m. EST. 

This will be a rematch of a game from early October that saw St. Xavier come out on top 31-24. This will be the sixth time since 2009 that these two teams go head-to-head and just the second time in the postseason. Looking at On3’s Massey Ratings score predictions, St. Xavier has a 72 percent chance to win this game with the projected final score favoring the Tigers, 34-21.

For a full breakdown of what’s in store on Friday night, check out Daniel Hager’s preview here.

Stoops loses a WR commit

This one isn’t all that shocking, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting a bit. Three-star wide receiver Ja’Kayden Ferguson announced his decommitment from Kentucky last night — just a few days after posting a picture to social media of himself in full UK gear with the caption “#bbn GO BIG BLUE”.

LSU is perceived as the early favorite to scoop Ferguson up. The Tigers are recruiting him to play cornerback. He is ranked No. 521 overall in the 2025 recruiting class. Kentucky is now down to 20 commits in this cycle, which ranks 23rd in the country and 12th in the SEC. Stoops still has three high school wide receivers locked in: Preston Bowman, Quintin Simmons, and Montavin Quisenberry.

Pitino congratulated Pope on Duke win

Rick Pitino has fully endorsed Mark Pope from the moment he was hired at UK. So, of course, he posted a congratulations message following the Wildcats’ win over Duke. Like a proud dad patting his son on the back.

“Congrats Cap. No surprise to me,” he posted, adding a flex emoji at the end.

Congrats Cap. No surprise to me 💪🏼

— Rick Pitino (@RealPitino) November 13, 2024

Brad White wants more “pride” from his defense

Kentucky’s defense wasn’t great throughout the month of October after a solid start to the season. Florida and Auburn posted season-high totals in passing yards and rushing yards. There was bounceback against Tennessee, but still not nearly enough. With three games left on the schedule, getting back in a groove against FCS Murray State this weekend is vital.

Defensive coordinator Brad White wants to see every game from here on out treated like the last of the season.

“The key focus this week for us is we gotta take pride in performance,” White said. “Everybody that’s on that field needs to pride in their performance and the standard that we set. So from the first snap to the last, I want to see guys straining, finishing, pinning ball carriers to the ground. I don’t want it sloppy. I want it high energy and execution at a high level.”

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