Kentucky basketball coaches scouted top prospects last weekend. How did those players do?

Grassroots basketball began in earnest over the weekend with both the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) and Adidas 3 Stripe Select Basketball (3SSB) circuits tipping off with sessions in Atlanta and Iowa, respectively.

This also coincided with the first recruiting live period of 2023, which meant college basketball coaches from around the country were at both events keeping tabs on current recruits and discovering new ones.

The Kentucky men’s basketball coaching staff was no different, with the quartet of head coach John Calipari, associate to the head coach Bruiser Flint, associate coach Orlando Antigua and assistant coach Chin Coleman all out watching prospects.

UK was represented at both the Adidas and Nike events.

How did Kentucky’s key recruits in the class of 2024 and beyond fare with the spotlight squarely on them?

Kentucky continues evaluation of priority 2024 recruits

Let’s start with some of Kentucky’s most high-profile and longest-tenured recruits in the class of 2024.

This includes top-ranked class of 2024 recruit Tre Johnson (a 6-foot-5 shooting guard from Texas) and combo guard Boogie Fland (from New York).

Both players were in action at the Nike EYBL stop in Atlanta: Johnson with his new travel team, Houston Hoops, and Fland with the PSA Cardinals.

Johnson has held the crown as the top-ranked recruit in the class of 2024 for some time now, and produced a mixed bag across four games with his Houston Hoops (2-2) team, which also features another player with a UK scholarship offer in small forward Amier Ali.

(On Monday afternoon, Ali included Kentucky among his top eight schools under consideration).

Johnson was a combined 22-for-60 (36.67%) from the field over the weekend, while making nearly 42% of his three-point shots. He scored in double figures in all four games.

Johnson was an active distributor, dishing out at least four assists in each of his games, which fit well with his stated goal to display more of a true point guard ability.

As the No. 1 player nationally in the class, Johnson already has an impressive body of work: He led his Lake Highlands High School team to a Texas state championship in March.

Johnson took an official junior year visit to UK in January for Kentucky’s home game against Kansas. Johnson will visit the Jayhawks in May, and he also took junior year officials to Baylor (where his father played) and Texas.

One of the assistant coaches at Baylor when Johnson’s father played at the school was Rodney Terry, the newly minted permanent head coach at Texas.

Across four games with the PSA Cardinals (2-2), the 6-3 Fland largely struggled to score, aside from one outlier performance. Fland had 31 points on 9-for-16 shooting from the field (including 5-for-9 from three-point range) in a Saturday afternoon loss.

Fland had nine or fewer points in the other three games he played last weekend, but recorded at least four assists in two of those games.

The charismatic and dynamic ball handler from New York has already taken an official visit to North Carolina, the school that edged out Kentucky for another top backcourt prospect in the 2024 class in Ian Jackson.

Fland is a five-star recruit who is ranked as the No. 7 overall player in the 2024 class by the 247Sports Composite. He’s expected to strongly consider Kentucky for an official visit.

UK legacy recruit stars in Atlanta

No player at the Nike EYBL session in Atlanta was more impressive as a raw scorer than class of 2024 small forward Karter Knox, the younger brother of former UK player Kevin Knox.

The 6-6 Knox is fourth in the EYBL in points per game after a weekend in which he had scoring outputs of 20, 27, 21 and 17 points for his Florida Rebels (2-2) team. Knox shot the ball at a blistering 60.8% clip from the field and had the same three-point success (10-for-24) as Johnson, the top-ranked recruit in the 2024 class.

Knox’s average of 1.8 steals per contest is also among the leaders in EYBL play thus far.

His recruitment has largely been framed as a Kentucky vs. Louisville battle, given his close connections to both schools.

Knox’s older brother was on hand to watch him play at the Nike EYBL session, as was Louisville head coach Kenny Payne.

Kentucky offers scholarships to Ahmad Nowell, Koa Peat, Darius Acuff Jr.

It is exceedingly rare for a top high school prospect to announce his college commitment at a grassroots basketball event, especially one that isn’t the Nike EYBL season-ending Peach Jam in July.

Therefore, most of the meaningful moments that come from these events, especially during recruiting live periods, are the extension of scholarship offers to players after a final in-person assessment.

Kentucky did this three times in recent days.

In Atlanta during the Nike EYBL session, UK offered a scholarship to class of 2024 combo guard Ahmad Nowell of Team Final.

Nowell is four-star recruit who is ranked as the No. 33 overall player in his class, per the 247Sports Composite. In four games with Team Final (3-1), Nowell averaged five assists per game with an assists-to-turnover ratio of nearly 7-to-1.

The 6-foot, 180-pound Nowell made a scintillating 66.7% of his shots from the field, and 52.9% of his three-pointers. He scored double-digit points on three occasions.

UK has had plenty of chances to watch Nowell play: He was a high school teammate of incoming Kentucky Wildcat Justin Edwards at Imhotep Institute in Philadelphia.

The other player to earn a Kentucky scholarship offer over the weekend was five-star power forward Koa Peat, a member of the 2025 recruiting class from Arizona.

Peat plays on the Adidas 3SSB circuit with Compton Magic.

The 6-8 Peat was scheduled for a recruiting visit to Nebraska at the end of last weekend, and has family ties to the Big Ten school: His brother played football for the Cornhuskers.

Peat’s offer list already features a who’s who of college basketball blue bloods: Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and UCLA among them.

Prior to receiving the scholarship offer from Kentucky, Calipari was courtside to watch Peat score 29 points in a win.

On Monday afternoon, Darius Acuff Jr. also reported a scholarship offer from Kentucky.

Acuff is a member of the 2025 recruiting class, which means he is one of just three players in the 2025 class to have a UK scholarship offer, joining Peat and Ohio-based shooting guard Darryn Peterson.

Acuff is a Michigan-based prospect who doesn’t yet have a ranking according to the 247Sports Composite.

Other scholarship offers for the 6-1, 165-pound point guard include Michigan and Pittsburgh.

Acuff plays for The Family on the Nike EYBL circuit and he averaged more than 18 points per game across The Family’s four games (2-2) in Atlanta last weekend.

He shot 60% from the field (30-for-50) and 46.7% on three-point shots (7-for-15) during the opening weekend of Nike EYBL play.

Nike shifts to Phoenix, Adidas to Texas this weekend

With grassroots basketball action now in full swing, the sessions will start coming thick and fast, including this weekend.

The Nike EYBL circuit will be in Phoenix from Friday through Sunday, while the Adidas 3SSB circuit will be in Bryan, Texas, during the same period.

This upcoming weekend is another recruiting live period, so you can expect college coaches to again make good use of their frequent-flyer miles.