Will Mark Pope be able to hold off John Calipari for a top 2025 recruit?

Mark Pope isn’t done with the recruiting trail yet, and he wants to add five-star forward Caleb Wilson as the fourth and final member of the 2025 class. Kentucky has already signed five-star Jasper Johnson, five-star Malachi Moreno and four-star Acaden Lewis. Coach Pope wants Wilson to be the final piece of the puzzle in the class of 2025.

Wilson is the fifth-best player in the class of 2025 according to 247Sports’ composite rankings, and the way he plays the game makes Wilson a perfect fit to play against the four in Coach Pope’s system.

Recently, five-star guard Meleek Thomas committed to play with coach John Calipari, giving the Wildcats’ former head coach two elite five-stars in the class of 2025. Thomas recently joined a podcast and was asked which players in the class of 2025 he would trying to recruit for Arkansas. One of the names Thomas mentioned was Wilson.

While Kentucky fans don’t like the way Calipari always does things when it comes to X’s and O’s, there’s no denying that he’s the best recruiter in college basketball. This means that Coach Pope will have to do a lot of work to land Wilson. Fortunately for Coach Pope and the Wildcats, Wilson is friends with Lewis, and hopefully the elite point guard will help Coach Pope on the recruiting trail.

If Coach Pope is able to take down some of the big dogs and land Wilson, it will be the biggest win on the road for Kentucky’s new head coach.