It’s no longer Kentucky and everyone else when it comes to college basketball recruiting.
John Calipari hasn’t lost his fastball — the Wildcats are still No. 1, but Kansas is 1A, based on the talent Bill Self has begun to accumulate and the one-on-one battles he has won of late against Calipari.
Last spring, Kansas beat out Kentucky for current freshman Andrew Wiggins, a Canadian import and arguably the top talent coming out of high school since LeBron James. On Monday, Kansas again got the better of Kentucky, this time for Kelly Oubre, a multi-skilled, 6-foot-7 forward ranked among the top senior prospects nationally in the Class of 2014 and a five-star recruit.
Wiggins’ commitment to Kansas changed the recruiting landscape, and possibly the national championship picture this season if the 6-foot-8 forward is indeed worthy of the hype.
Kentucky is no longer getting every elite prospect it targets — the Wildcats whiffed on point guard Emmanuel Mudiay, who chose SMU in his hometown of Dallas this summer — and Kansas is picking up steam as a challenger to the recruiting throne.
“The past five years, John Calipari has clearly been the cream of the crop when it comes to recruiting, but I think with last year and heading into this year, Bill Self certainly has buzz about Kansas rising, especially among kids,” Scout.com national recruiting analyst Evan Daniels told The Post. “He’s really good at relating to kids and the people around them. Bill Self is a regular guy, very personable, funny. I think that’s one of the reasons he’s had so much success.”
Despite losing out on Wiggins, Kentucky still has the No. 1 freshmen class in the country, a loaded group that included four of the top 11 players in Scout.com’s rankings. Led by versatile forward Julius Randle and electric twin guards Andrew and Aaron Harrison, it is a group some have listed among the best of all time.
“Kentucky is still, from a recruiting standpoint, the leader,” Daniels said.
Kansas, however, isn’t far behind with Wiggins, dynamic shooting guard Wayne Selden, who is ranked 12th, and top-20 center Joel Embiid. Scout ranks the Jayhawks class at No. 2.
The two coaches are very familiar with one another. They were both graduate assistants under Larry Brown at Kansas, they coached against each other in two national championships — Self won in 2008, when Calipari was at Memphis, and Calipari won in 2012 — and recently have gone toe-to-toe on the recruiting trail. They preside over elite programs with rabid fan bases that accept nothing less than Final Fours and national titles.
Until recently, Calipari had gotten the better of Self, beating him out for Randle and freshman James Young, though Self was able to nab the NBA’s Morris brothers, Marcus and Markieff, after they de-committed to Memphis. When Calipari left Memphis for Kentucky, he was unable to take Xavier Henry, another current NBA player, with him. Henry went to Kansas.
“This isn’t their first rodeo,” Daniels said. “They’ve been recruiting against each other for years.”
Calipari is known for stockpiling one-and-done talent — players who attend college for one season before jumping to the NBA — and Self has begun to follow that model, shedding to some degree his reputation for developing talent rather than molding it. Ben McLemore played just one season before jumping to the NBA, taken seventh overall by the Sacramento Kings, and Wiggins almost certainly will follow be gone by the spring.
Kansas and Kentucky each have a top-10 player for 2014. Kentucky has secured the services of New Jersey forward Karl Towns. Both are in the mix for a series of uncommitted top-10 prospects.
Unlike in recent years, however, it’s not certain those players will end up in Lexington. In fact, the odds may even favor Lawrence.
“I don’t think it’s that far out of the realm of possibility that [Kansas] can end up with four of the top 10 players [in the country],” Daniels said.