Calipari recruit that surprised you the most?

[JonathanW]

I too will go with Davis. He was too thin, not strong enough, did I think he would be good? Yes. But no where near POY good.

 

[TexKat]

I must go with Ulis. The most court savvy player probably that Cal has had to date. Open your pg dictionary and there is his picture!

 

[Mike-D]

Jamal Murray

 

[K_TIME]

Ullis to the good...He probably put up a top 2-3 season for a UK PG in school history his Sophmore year with a not too great roster to play alongside of (Murray the only exception). I don't think a soul had that in mind when we lost out of Emmanual Mudiay as our main PG that recruiting year.

Skal to the bad...We all thought he was Anthony Davis-ish. And he basically was benched behind Lee/Poythress on a team that had no interior presence for the final 2/3 of year. It was astonishing how he could go games and grab 1-2 rebounds while at Center.

 

[Herding Cats]

My job requires me to travel extensively. I was very surprised to see Willis while on the road one evening.

 

[Mojocat]

On the negative side, it was hard not to be surprised with how much Skal struggled. There were some clear red flags, but he seemed like such a fluid athlete, with such a good stroke, that I figured "struggling" would mean at worst 11-12 ppg, 6-7 rebounds, a lot of blocks.

I hesitate to do this bit of thinking out loud, could go down a rabbit hole. But, there are no original thoughts here, someone has probably said it already. There is a nasty strain here that always cries about Cal and getting his players to the NBA. That he's more worried about the draft than winning, that he pushes them out whether they are ready or not, that, in general, he is more concerned about his players than he is about the program/winning. I always discount that, because there is no tension there. You don't have to pick. What is good for his players is the stuff that produces winning teams - they go together. Lot of wasted energy seems to me. But.....I wonder if Skal is the one kid that might be a point of evidence for those touting all that. Cal clearly believes you have to have a solid post game (meaning, you have to be tough as nails to last down low in the NBA) to reach your potential if you are a big. That worked wonders for KAT, who came in wanting to be Jonathan Bender, and left a mere 9 months later as the most promising big in the world, arguably. But I wonder if it was all counterproductive for Skal. He just doesn't have the makeup to get there, it seems. I wonder if he'd have let Skal be the finesse player he wanted, if that would have resulted in, at least, the kind of statistical production we all expected for the kid. That would have been arguably best for the team, but worse for the kid (although, had Cal known how it would work out, maybe in hindsight he'd say for this one kid, I should have let him be him). Cal chose the path that he thought was best for the kid's future, even though I bet he knew a week into practice it was going to mean Skal wasn't going to have the kind of year everyone thought he'd have......If that makes sense........

 

[Cindog28]

When we got WCS, I never dreamed he'd be as good as he turned out to be. I pictured him coloring on the sidewalk listening to headphones in his own world. Kid was different. Then / stud. This block was epic:

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I feel like I've seen that before.

 

[Cindog28]

Jorts for sure. Never really showed anything before he played for Calipari (except the inside of a bathroom stall). I remember he was wrote off by fans the minute he and Buddy Halsell stepped out of junior college.

I remember there were fans who believed Kevin Galloway or A.J. Stewart should have been kept instead. Jorts will forever be one of my favorite players at UK.