Mark Story: After criticism, is Mark Pope finding Kentucky's recruiting sweet spot?

Mark Story, Lexington Herald-Leader on Nov 7, 2026

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — The commitment to Kentucky on Wednesday by 7-foot-5 Cherif Millogo may eventually carry historic significance beyond having given UK the tallest recruit in its men’s basketball history.

It’s possible that Millogo, a native of the West African nation of Burkina Faso who is now playing high school basketball in California, will become the first top 10-ranked recruit of the Pope coaching era.

Presently, Millogo is ranked the No. 8 player in the Class of 2027 on ESPN’s SportsCenter Next 100 list.

Kentucky will enter the one-week, early signing period that commences Nov. 11 holding commitments from Millogo and Ryan Hampton, a 6-6 wing from Heath, Texas, who is rated the No. 31 prospect in the Next 100.

“This is a unique recruiting cycle, and so we’ve been really active with high school freshmen in this fall recruiting period,” Pope said Tuesday after UK’s season-opening win over Manhattan. “But it’s got to be the right player at the right time at the right price, and we’re trying to be smart and disciplined with our decision-making.”

Going back to the Joe B. Hall coaching era in the 1970s, an element of the Big Blue Nation has seemed to get more gratification from recruiting victories than from actually winning games.

For that portion of the Wildcats fandom, the one-and-done-heavy John Calipari era, with its need for constant roster restocking and recruiting, has proven difficult to move on from.

That Pope has not been consistently “feeding the beast” by reeling in top-10 recruits has opened the coach up to criticism.

Yet here’s the thing about recruiting from the pool of high school players who are most likely to leave college after only one season to move to the NBA: There’s no recent evidence that is the best path to making Final Fours and winning NCAA championships.

There have been six recruiting classes so far in the decade of the 2020s. Combining the top-10 ranked recruits in the 24/7 Sports Composite Rankings for each of those years gives one a pool of 60 players.

You want to guess how many of those top-10 recruits played in the Final Four as college freshmen?

Five.

Wonder how many top-10 recruits have played for an NCAA championship team as a frosh so far in the 2020s?

One.

Connecticut’s Stephon Castle — the No. 9 recruit in the class of 2023 — helped Dan Hurley’s Huskies win it all in 2024.

Of the past 10 NCAA title teams, not one has started more than one freshman in a Final Four game. Five of the teams that cut down the nets since 2016 — including the past two national champs, Florida (2025) and Michigan (2026) — have started no frosh.

Now, there is some recent evidence that the pendulum in men’s college hoops is starting to swing (slightly) back toward younger players.

From 2016 through 2024, the total number of freshman starters on the four Final Four teams in any season never numbered more than two out of 20.

However, in 2025, Duke reached the NCAA Tournament national semifinals with a team that started three frosh (Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach).

Last year’s Final Four featured six freshman starters — three for Arizona (Koa Peat, Brayden Burries and Ivan Kharchenkov); two for Illinois (Keaton Wagler and David Mirkovic); and one for Connecticut (Braylon Mullins).

Moving forward, the NCAA’s new “five years to play five seasons” eligibility rule is being implemented to produce a younger overall talent pool in college sports.

Neither career-extending medical waivers nor the COVID year will be available in the future to prolong the college athletics experiences of players into their middle-20s.

As for Millogo, he is not presently as highly ranked in the Rivals 150 (No. 24) nor the 24/7 Sports composite (No. 29) as he is by ESPN.

From reading the comments of evaluators from those companies, however, it sounds like the new UK commit is destined for a substantial “ratings bump” soon.

In the big picture, this is the challenge of coaching men’s basketball at and recruiting for Kentucky:

One portion of your fan base places extreme emphasis on signing players from the very top of the prospect lists. Another segment, and there is overlap, expects Kentucky to make deep runs in the NCAA Tournament every year.

Those two goals have not recently been compatible.

That suggests a UK coach likely needs to find a middle ground between Calipari’s freshman-centric roster construction and the teams with less recruiting star power that Pope has so far built primarily via the transfer portal.

As Pope commences an important third season coaching at his college alma mater, maybe the successful wooing of Millogo suggests the UK head man is finding the right balance in recruiting.

“I’m really confident that we’re going to end up exactly where we want to be,” Pope said Tuesday of UK’s recruiting. “We’re being incredibly intentional about this. I wish we could talk about everything we’re doing in recruiting, but we can’t. But I like where we are right now, and I like how we’re going right now.”