This Kansas hoops standout is racking up scholarship offers. It wasn’t always that way

Ketraleus ‘Bo’ Aldridge was an unknown face to the basketball world for most of his life.

As a seventh-grader, he didn’t take the game all that seriously because of his height — he was 5-foot-5 at the time. Even after watching his family play basketball nearly every Sunday at the Hillcrest Community Center since age 1, and taking part in local YMCA competition at age 2, Aldridge felt like his height would hold him back.

Luckily for Aldridge, the growth spurt the Topeka native wanted arrived after seventh grade. He shot up to 5-10. And then, by his sophomore year of high school, he grew to 6-2.

Now 6-4, Aldridge is a combo guard and Kansas Class 5A Player of the Year. After receiving minimal recognition early in his prep career, he owns one of the most decorated resumes in Topeka high school basketball history.

And not just because of the additional height. It’s also owing to hard work.

“I’ll sit around for maybe 30 minutes to an hour and I’ll be like, ‘If I want to make it (to the next level), I’ve got to go the gym’” Aldridge said. “There’s a million other people in the gym trying to beat you when you could be in the gym trying to beat them.”

Aldridge said he currently holds 14 Division I offers — and most of them arrived after the end of his senior season. But that’s not the most interesting part of his story: Between April 26 and May 1, Aldridge secured four offers, including his first from a high-major program (Oklahoma). On June 19, he scooped up four more.

His high school coach, Mike Williams, said he hasn’t doubted Aldridge’s talent since his freshman year. The left-hander can score any number of ways. The only missing piece of the puzzle was his ability to get in front of the right people.

“He was never shy about advocating for himself,” Williams said. “He’s got kids now believing and thinking that they can do those things.”

Aldridge joined the Trae Young 17U AAU team this summer. And that provided a foot in the door nationally. He turned in a strong performance at an invite-only Midwest showcase, prompting a summer coach to reach out to the AAU team’s coach, George Clay.

That connection allowed Aldridge to compete and play with some of the top young players in the nation. It also planted him in front of some college coaches and scouts.

“Bo is one of the few kids that wants to be in the gym,” his trainer, Jesús “Izzy” Izquierdo, said. “He’s already talented, but if he just stays in the gym being more consistent then there’s no limits for him.”

Aldridge and his trainer met coincidentally for the first time in January. Izquierdo had a workout scheduled with one of Aldridge’s teammates, and Aldridge tagged along. Now the two meet up two to three times a week at the GreatLIFE Performance Center’s warehouse-like basketball court in Topeka.

Aldridge has put in countless hours on the hardwood on his own. He works to strengthen his non-dominant hand, hone a move or show off his bounce.

Izquierdo, who played college basketball for four years and competed professionally overseas for three, knows what it takes to play at the next level. His goals include helping Aldridge get out of Topeka, make his family proud and prepare for some high-level tournaments this month, included the recently concluded Adidas championship.

“On the Adidas circuit, we lost one game only, which was a game we shouldn’t have lost,” Aldridge said. “We’re all going into July with a chip on our shoulder and that’s not going to change ... We’re just not going to let anyone step in the way of us winning.”

With the nearly hour-long distance that separates Kansas City and Topeka, Williams expressed how difficult it is for players to get recruited in Kansas’ capital. Rather than traveling 50-plus miles west, Williams said, recruiters will look for talent in the KC area instead. They’re hoping to find similar players in a bigger pool.

Williams said Aldridge has broken that mold. As a senior, he was a catalyst in his Highland Park High team’s third-place finish at state, helping the Scots boast the state’s highest-scoring offense while averaging 20.7 points, 7.1 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 2.7 steals per game. Highland Park’s combined record during his junior and senior seasons was a combined 42-6.

Before that success, though, Aldridge said he sat out his sophomore year to dedicate himself to improvement. He worked out by himself daily. When he returned to the team, he was 6-4 and ready to work.

“The core and the fabric of who Bo Aldrige is, is a good young man who stands for the right things,” Williams said. “He didn’t miss workouts, he was showing up. He was regularly there, you know — he’s flying out on a Friday but he’s at workouts Monday through Thursday.”

Aldridge said he played in more than 50 games that summer, with summer league all week and AAU tournaments on the weekends.

In February, Aldridge reclassified to the class of 2024 because he didn’t have the offers he wanted. But now he says he might reclassify back to his original class of 2023, commit to one of the programs that’s offered him a scholarship and then head off to college — all options are on the table.

Even though Aldridge’s high school career is over and the future is presently unknown, Williams believes he will eventually become a name the city talks about for the next 20 or 30 years.

And there’s no way Aldridge is done just yet.

“Freshman year, everybody else had recognition and all that,” he said. “I was somebody unknown that had no kind of write-ups, none of that. Now I’m kind of on the verge of being unforgettable.”