Mark Pope gets his first 2025 Kentucky basketball commitment from a local high school star

Mark Pope has landed his first 2025 commitment from a recruit as the Kentucky men’s basketball coach.

And it’s a major in-state star who has pledged to join the Wildcats for the 2025-26 season.

On Friday morning, Malachi Moreno — a 6-foot-11, 230-pound center from Georgetown’s Great Crossing High School — announced his commitment to UK.

Moreno selected Pope and Kentucky from a final shortlist of schools that also included Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisville, North Carolina, Notre Dame, and Ohio State.

“It feels great, knowing I’m going to be able to wear (Kentucky) across my chest for the next couple years,” Moreno told reporters following his commitment Friday.

Moreno made his college commitment inside the Great Crossing High School gym during an event that was attended by fans, teammates, media members and plenty of other spectators.

Also in attendance for the ceremony was Malachi’s older brother, Michael , a former star basketball player at Scott County who recently finished a distinguished five-year playing career at Eastern Kentucky.

The commitment event was also streamed live on the 247Sports YouTube channel.

Ranked by the 247Sports Composite as a four-star prospect and as the No. 26 overall player in the 2025 recruiting class, Moreno had planned to take a smattering of official visits this September and October. But instead, he canceled those plans and made his college commitment well in advance of his senior season at Great Crossing.

Why did Moreno opt to commit now?

“God put me on this path, so I just chose to follow it,” Moreno said.

Last season with the Warhawks, Moreno was a key part of a Great Crossing team that reached the Sweet 16 state tournament for the first time in the 5-year-old school’s history. Moreno averaged 16 points and 13 rebounds per game entering the Sweet 16, then added performances of 24 points and 19 rebounds (in an opening win against Spencer County), 16 points and 15 rebounds (in a quarterfinal win against Magoffin County) and 12 points and 14 rebounds (in a semifinal loss to eventual state champion Lyon County).

“Yes, he’s a heck of a basketball player, but (Kentucky) is going to get an incredible kid. It’s great to have somebody with that much talent, but you don’t have to worry about him,” Great Crossing boys basketball head coach Steve Page said. “He’s going to do the right things. Kentucky fans are going to absolutely fall in love with him because he’s that personality, he’s that good of a kid.”

Moreno turned in an impressive grassroots season this spring and summer while playing with Indiana Elite on the Adidas 3SSB Circuit. According to Synergy Sports, Indiana Elite ranked in the top seven in both offensive efficiency and defensive stops during the 2024 Adidas 3SSB season, and Moreno had the most dunks (33) of any player in that league’s 17-and-under division.

247Sports national basketball analyst Travis Branham — who earlier this week logged a prediction for the Wildcats to land Moreno — told the Herald-Leader that Moreno has “done a great job of evolving and building his game” over the past year.

“Really improving on the areas that we were looking for him to improve on,” Branham added about Moreno.

“We all knew he had great size and skill for the position. But what he’s really improved on is using his size to his advantage: Going down into the paint, going down on the low block, scoring over either shoulder, using that frame to kind of bruise guys up way more than he’s used to.”

Mark Pope gets a recruiting win with Malachi Moreno’s commitment

Moreno’s commitment to Kentucky is important for a bevy of reasons. Top among the list is that it represents a recruiting win for Pope, who — along with his new coaching staff — made Moreno a priority prospect over the last few months.

Moreno was first offered a Kentucky basketball scholarship by former UK coach John Calipari last October. After Pope was hired as Calipari’s replacement in April, the full-court press was on to try and get the Central Kentucky native to stay home for school.

Pope and his coaching staff watched Moreno several times in recent months across the country, including in Colorado at USA Basketball tryouts, in Florida at the NBPA Top 100 Camp, in Shelbyville at the KABC Titans-Rockets Summer Shootout and in South Carolina at the Adidas 3SSB championships.

And Moreno was no stranger to Kentucky either. Moreno’s visits to Lexington included last year’s Big Blue Madness event, January’s home win over Mississippi State, February’s home win over Alabama and several stops this summer to unofficially meet with Pope and his coaching staff.

During the NBPA Top 100 Camp in Orlando, Moreno spoke to the Herald-Leader about what he tried to show off about his game over the last few months.

“My versatility, just being able to switch 1 through 5 and being able to handle the ball and make plays with the ball in my hands,” Moreno said in June. “… I think my biggest jump (as a player) has been my physicality and how I play the game. I’m not just playing the 5 anymore: I space out the floor a lot. Just getting my teammates involved is (another) way that I’ve gotten better.”

“He just sits down and talks with you, some of the times it’s not even about basketball. It’s just about life. He’ll just come down and talk to you,” Moreno said Friday about Pope, who won a national championship as a UK player in 1996. “He’s told me stories about his time at Kentucky. He’s not just a coach, but he’s also a father figure to all his players.”

By committing to Kentucky, Moreno also continues a strong run of in-state recruiting success for the Wildcats that began during Calipari’s tenure. The Wildcats have landed consecutive winners of the state’s Mr. Basketball award with Reed Sheppard (North Laurel) in 2023 and Travis Perry (Lyon County) in 2024.

Moreno and Perry are good friends, and Moreno said Friday morning that a phone call to Perry was on his list of plans for the afternoon.

Moreno is the early frontrunner to win the Kentucky Mr. Basketball award in 2025: The UK men’s program hasn’t brought in three straight winners of the Kentucky Mr. Basketball award since the 1980s, when Rex Chapman (1986, Apollo), John Pelphrey (1987, Paintsville) and Richie Farmer (1988, Clay County) all chose to become Wildcats.

But Moreno’s recruiting profile has extended far beyond the borders of the commonwealth.

This summer alone, Moreno took part in the Adidas EuroCamp in Italy, the aforementioned NBPA Top 100 Camp in Florida and the Under Armour Next Elite 24 recruiting showcase in Brooklyn.

Branham, the 247Sports basketball analyst, added that Moreno’s development over the past year has also seen the talented big man make strides defensively on everything from rebounding to contesting and blocking shots at the rim.

This makes sense for a player who has cited Rudy Gobert (a four-time NBA defensive player of the year) and ex-Cat Anthony Davis (a nine-time NBA All-Star) among the current NBA stars that he tries to emulate.

“ That physicality component is something that he’s really improved on,” Branham said. “(It’s) where he’s really kind of proving himself to be this Kentucky-caliber recruit.”

With this said, Moreno himself still sees plenty of room for improvement in his game as a high school senior at Great Crossing.

Among his targeted areas of improvement are ball handling and 3-point shooting, with the goal of becoming a floor-spacing big man.

“Just being able to be a play making big, like how they are in the NBA now, but also being able to hang banners and win championships,” Moreno said of how Pope plans to utilize him at UK.

Moreno is one of the few elite 2025 recruits to make college commitment

We are still in the early stages of class of 2025 college basketball recruits sorting out their college commitments.

In addition to Moreno, only five other players in the top 40 of the 247Sports Composite prospect rankings for the 2025 class — No. 8 Darius Acuff Jr. (Arkansas) , No. 22 Sadiq White Jr. (Syracuse), No. 28 Jamier Jones (Providence), No. 32 Jacob Wilkins (Georgia) and No. 39 Elzie Harrington (Harvard) — have committed to a school.

Plenty of these recruiting dominoes still to fall will involve Kentucky, as Pope has put the Wildcats in contention for several talented prospects.

Front of mind for Kentucky basketball fans now will be another talented class of 2025 recruit with strong ties to Central Kentucky. Former Woodford County High School shooting guard Jasper Johnson — a five-star recruit who now plays at the Overtime Elite program in Atlanta — is expected to make his college decision later this month.

Alabama, Kentucky and North Carolina are the schools with the most buzz for Johnson right now, although UK is publicly viewed as the third choice in that recruiting race.

Following his Friday morning commitment, Moreno had a message for Johnson.

“You know where home is at, Jasper,” Moreno said to cheers in the Great Crossing gym.

Regardless of what happens with Johnson or any number of the other talented players that UK is in on in the 2025 class, Pope is now officially on the board when it comes to future recruiting at Kentucky with Moreno’s commitment.

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