During John Calipari’s 15-season run as the Kentucky men’s basketball coach, the Wildcats recruited at an elite level, securing commitments from 47 McDonald’s All-Americans from March 2009 until his exit last spring.
For most of that time Calipari employed a distinct recruiting approach: The former Kentucky coach was deliberate in extending scholarship offers to prospects. Often, a Kentucky offer from Calipari wouldn’t be dished out until a recruit had made a visit to Lexington.
That trend changed toward the end of Calipari’s UK tenure, with the now-Arkansas coach being more willing to extend scholarship offers to class of 2024 players at an earlier stage in the recruiting process.
The early stages of Mark Pope’s time as the UK basketball coach have shown a similar willingness to extend scholarship offers to prospects earlier, rather than later, in their recruitments.
Already, the Wildcats have four scholarship offers out to prospects in the 2026 recruiting class. These are players who are about to begin their junior years of high school. Three of these recruits — Tyran Stokes, Brandon McCoy and Caleb Holt — are five-star prospects according to the 247Sports Composite rankings. The other, Miikka Muurinen, is a four-star recruit.
As part of an offseason that included assembling a brand-new roster (largely via the NCAA transfer portal), putting together a coaching staff and identifying class of 2025 recruits to pursue, Pope and UK have already carved out time to begin recruiting class of 2026 players.
Coaches are now allowed to contact class of 2026 recruits as well, meaning Pope and his assistants are the ones trying to sell their vision of the UK program to these talented teenagers.
Plenty of activity will still come in the recruitments of each of these players, and new names to know in the class of 2026 will continue to come to the surface.
But for now, here’s a look at the four players in the class of 2026 that Kentucky basketball has extended a scholarship offer to.
Players are listed in order of their 247Sports Composite ranking.
Tyran Stokes
Height: 6-foot-7.
Weight: 245 pounds.
Position: Power forward.
247Sports Composite ranking: No. 1 recruit in 2026 class.
Stokes, a Louisville native, was the lone class of 2026 recruit to earn a Kentucky scholarship offer when Calipari was leading the UK program. But, his recruitment by the Wildcats has extended into Pope’s tenure as the UK coach.
Stokes has dominated in both grassroots and prep basketball for the last two seasons as a freshman and sophom*ore. This has included standout showings in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) and with Prolific Prep, his former high school in California. Stokes will be playing high school basketball for Notre Dame in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Sherman Oaks this coming season.
A powerful player with all-around skill, Stokes also impressed this summer while collecting a gold medal with the United States at the 2024 FIBA Under-17 World Cup in Turkey. He averaged 12.3 points, 7 rebounds, 5.6 assists and 1.9 steals per contest across seven games as the U.S. coasted to the title.
This environment gave the 16-year-old plenty of new on-court experiences as well, such as playing point guard, as well as the 3 and 4 positions.
“He’s so gifted as a passer. He’s explosive and tough to guard,” Ryan Bernardi, who coached Stokes at Prolific Prep, told the Herald-Leader earlier this year. “... We trust in him implicitly because of how unselfish he is and his passing ability and willingness to make the right play.”
For a while, Stokes was the only class of 2026 player with a Kentucky offer. While Pope has added three other prospects to that distinguished list in recent weeks, Kentucky continues to pay plenty of attention to Stokes.
Pope and his assistant coaches have gotten multiple viewings of Stokes this summer, even traveling to Turkey to watch Stokes and other recruits at the FIBA World Cup.
“He’s just always talking about how I can improve,” Stokes told the Herald-Leader last month about Pope. “Just telling me, ‘Oh yeah, you’re good at this, good at that.’ Telling me you can improve on this and those type of things.”
Something to watch in Stokes’ recruitment will be the potential allure of a homecoming: Stokes lived in Louisville until age 9 and said most of his family still lives in the Derby City.
Hometown U of L is also recruiting Stokes, led by head coach Pat Kelsey and assistant coach Ronnie Hamilton, two men who have sparked Louisville’s recent recruiting momentum.
Brandon McCoy
Height: 6-foot-4.
Weight: 170 pounds.
Position: Point guard.
247Sports Composite ranking: No. 1 recruit in 2026 class.
McCoy, who plays high school basketball in California, is actually tied with Stokes for the title of top-ranked player in the 2026 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite.
He earned a scholarship offer from Kentucky in late July after being a key focus of Kentucky’s recruiting endeavors at Peach Jam, the season-ending Nike EYBL event in South Carolina.
Pope, along with assistant coach Jason Hart, had a front-and-center presence at Peach Jam to watch McCoy in action. With McCoy being from Southern California, he is well within Hart’s recruiting territory in his role as a UK assistant.
Before he came to Kentucky, Hart was a high school coach in Los Angeles and an assistant coach at both Pepperdine and Southern California, in addition to leading the NBA’s now-shuttered G League Ignite program.
McCoy also collected a gold medal this summer while representing the United States at the FIBA Under-17 World Cup in Turkey, which Kentucky had a presence at. McCoy averaged 10 points and 4.3 assists per game at that event.
On the Nike EYBL circuit, McCoy was a menace at both ends of the floor while playing for Arizona Unity, with per-game averages of 16.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and 1.9 steals, highlighting his ceiling as potentially the best two-way player in the 2026 recruiting class.
So far, McCoy’s recruitment has included unofficial visits to two schools close to home, Southern California and UCLA.
McCoy is the most recent recruit in the class of 2026 to announce a UK offer.
Caleb Holt
Height: 6-foot-5.
Weight: 200 pounds.
Position: Small forward.
247Sports Composite ranking: No. 3 recruit in 2026 class.
Holt is another class of 2026 prospect who suited up for and won gold with the United States this summer at the FIBA Under-17 World Cup in Turkey. He announced his Kentucky scholarship offer in late July.
With the U.S., Holt averaged 11.1 points per game and shot 50% from 3-point range as the Americans cruised to a seventh straight U-17 World Cup title.
Holt previously played high school basketball in Alabama, winning consecutive state championships and earning the state’s Mr. Basketball honor this year. As a high school sophom*ore, Holt averaged 20.2 points, 9.5 rebounds, 3 steals and 2.4 assists per game, and was named the Gatorade and MaxPreps Alabama Player of the Year.
Holt will play at Grayson High School in Georgia this coming season.
This past spring and summer, Holt was a star performer on the Adidas 3SSB circuit while playing up an age level for Game Elite. Pope and Hart are considered the primary points of contact for Holt with the Wildcats.
Miikka Muurinen
Height: 6-foot-10.
Weight: 185 pounds.
Position: Power forward.
247Sports Composite ranking: No. 68 recruit in 2026 class.
Muurinen — who was born in Finland — enjoyed a stock-rising summer while playing with Bradley Beal Elite in the Nike EYBL 16-and-under division. In particular, Muurinen impressed while playing in front of Pope and plenty of other college coaches at Peach Jam last month.
In six games at Peach Jam, Muurinen averaged 17.8 points, 4 rebounds and 1.3 blocks per contest while shooting 50% from 3-point range. He was the catalyst behind Bradley Beal Elite winning their division at Peach Jam.
Muurinen, who was the first class of 2026 player to report a UK scholarship offer this summer, is the son of two former professional basketball players from Finland. His mother played college basketball at North Carolina and his father played at Arkansas-Little Rock.
Muurinen represents Finland internationally and he’s set to receive a big boost in the recruiting rankings once all the major services update their rankings following the summer evaluation periods.
He’s also changing high schools ahead of his junior season. After coming to the United States and playing at Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas last season, Muurinen is now heading to Arizona to play at AZ Compass Prep.
Under Calipari, 14 players who were born outside of the United States suited up in a game for Kentucky. This season, Pope will have two players who were born outside the U.S. on his first Kentucky team: Kerr Kriisa (Estonia) and Amari Williams (England).
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