Tounde Yessoufou Trims List of Finalists to 10

Tounde Yessoufou has been a popular person on Kentucky Sports Radio dot com over the last 24 hours. A day after receiving an offer from the Wildcats, the Top 20 forward trimmed his list of schools to ten.

Yessoufou tells On3’s Joe Tipton he will choose between Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, UCLA, UConn, USC, and Washington.

A 6-foot-5 small forward, Yessoufou is the fourth-ranked player at his position and No. 19 overall player in the 2025 recruiting class, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services.

Yessoufou has already logged official visits to Arizona and USC. He visited Washington before a coaching change was made in Seattle. He has a trip to Baylor on the docket for Aug. 21. Kentucky was set to host him next weekend, but Pope is playing the long game. The Wildcats want to be his last official visit before he makes a decision, which will likely come later this fall.

Jacob Polacheck recently caught up with Yessoufou. The West African shared with KSR+ that Kentucky basketball is a big reason why he fell in love with the sport.

“Honestly, I watched a lot of John Wall,” Yessoufou said. “He was doing his thing over there. He was a really great guy. I’ve been watching the younger guys like Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] and them, how they’ve developed them, and what they’ve been doing in the league. All of that is just amazing.”

One of the brightest stars on the Nike EYBL circuit, he averaged 20.8 points per game for Team Why Not. Kentucky appears to have made him a top priority as Mark Pope assembles his first recruiting class in Lexington.

“They’ve been on me pretty hard,” Yessoufou told KSR+. “We had some Zoom meetings to keep building that relationship.”

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