LEXINGTON, Ky. — It’s not often that the men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky has the luxury of a player anywhere close to five-star recruiting status playing in his own backyard. It’s unbelievably rare, in fact.
Mark Pope found such a scenario waiting for him when he took over the Wildcats in April, his first few months on the UK job coinciding with Malachi Moreno’s final summer on the grassroots circuit in preparation for his senior season at Great Crossing High School, which is located just 14 miles up the road from Rupp Arena. The presence of Moreno — a 6-foot-11, 230-pound center and the No. 25 recruit nationally in the 2025 class, according to 247Sports — might seem a gift to most observers.
But the process of actually getting the promising big man to Lexington was far from wrapped up when Pope arrived. That made this pursuit a bit of a double-edged sword, from a PR perspective. For a new coach with relatively little experience on the national stage — following in the immediate footsteps of perhaps the greatest recruiter in recent college basketball history — a swing and miss on a target like Moreno right out of the gate would be terrible optics.
Pope needed Moreno. On Friday morning, he got him. That’s when the 17-year-old confirmed his commitment to the Cats, picking the local blue blood and its new head coach over a list filled with heavyweights.
Not only did Pope get his guy, but he got Kentucky’s 2025 recruiting cycle off to a .