Mark Pope and the Kentucky basketball coaching staff are back out recruiting.
An active spring and summer recruiting for Mark Pope and his new coaching staff continues this weekend as Kentucky gets a second look at prospects competing at Peach Jam, the season-ending Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) event that takes place at the Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta, South Carolina.
The Herald-Leader has been on location for the past several days at Peach Jam, tracking Kentucky prospects as they perform on one of the biggest stages in grassroots basketball and talking to them about their recruitments.
This year’s Peach Jam event spans two “evaluation periods,” which is when college coaches and recruiters can go off-campus to watch prospects play.
As such, Kentucky has already gotten a look at several top prospects — including top-ranked class of 2025 recruit AJ Dybantsa, top-ranked class of 2026 recruit Tyran Stokes and local prep basketball star Jasper Johnson — during last weekend’s Peach Jam recruiting window.
Now, the Wildcats’ coaching staff is back for more.
Keep track below of which Kentucky coaches are on hand at Peach Jam this weekend, and which games and players they’re watching.
This week’s recruiting period runs from 6 p.m. Friday to 3 p.m. Sunday. Peach Jam concludes Sunday.
Mark Pope, Jason Hart continue to recruit Saturday at Peach Jam
Pope and Hart have been a front-and-center presence Saturday in North Augusta, South Carolina, taking in the knockout portion of play in the 17-under division at Peach Jam.
This has included viewings of the top-ranked players in the 2025 and 2026 classes, AJ Dybantsa and Tyran Stokes, as well as another class of 2026 standout, five-star point guard Brandon McCoy.
Stokes and McCoy both play high school basketball in California, placing them firmly within Hart’s recruiting territory as a Kentucky assistant. Before arriving in Lexington, Hart was a high school coach in Los Angeles and an assistant coach at both Pepperdine and Southern California.
Pope and Hart got two looks at their top recruiting targets Saturday.
Cameron Boozer, Cayden Boozer and Caleb Wilson (Nightrydas Elite) and the aforementioned Dybantsa and Stokes (Oakland Soldiers) all played two games Saturday in the Peach Jam quarterfinals and semifinals.
Nightrydas Elite and Oakland Soldiers both won their quarterfinal and semifinal matchups, which means the two teams (which have gone a combined 42-2 this EYBL season) will play each other in Sunday’s Peach Jam title game.
Another piece of relevant UK basketball recruiting news arrived Saturday afternoon in the form of another transfer for Jasper Johnson, the Central Kentucky native and highly-coveted class of 2025 guard.
Johnson will spend his final pre-college season at the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite program. Johnson began his high school basketball career by playing at Woodford County, and he was the driving force behind the Yellow Jackets reaching the semifinals of the Sweet 16 state tournament in 2023.
Johnson played last season at Link Academy, a prep school in Missouri that was flush with five-star talent. This offseason, Link Academy’s former coach, Bill Armstrong, left the school to become an assistant coach at Baylor.
Mark Pope arrives at Peach Jam to watch Boozer twins, Caleb Wilson
Pope began this live period in Atlanta, checking out the Adidas 3SSB All-American camp that was held at the Overtime Elite facility in Atlanta.
From there, he made his way to Indiana for a Puma-sponsored event that featured center Chris Cenac, who picked up a UK scholarship offer earlier this summer.
Now, Pope is on the move again and has settled at Peach Jam for one of the most anticipated games of the Saturday slate: Cameron Boozer, Cayden Boozer and Caleb Wilson are all in action at the Riverview Park Activities Center with their Nightrydas Elite squad.
One of the favorites to win Peach Jam. Nightrydas has lost only once this season with that trio of five-star prospects leading the way.
UK seems to have fallen in its standing with the Boozer twins following the Calipari to Pope coaching change, but UK remains a factor in Wilson’s recruitment.
All three players visited UK last year.
Jason Hart watches four-star combo guard and UK recruit Acaden Lewis
It was a certainty that at least one Kentucky coach was going to be courtside for Acaden Lewis’ game on Friday night at Peach Jam.
The lefty 6-foot-2 combo guard is ranked as the No. 47 overall prospect in the 2025 recruiting class by the 247Sports Composite and has UK among his top eight schools under consideration.
So it was no surprise when Hart pulled up a chair to watch Lewis and his Team Durant squad play Team Melo in a late Friday night game.
Kentucky hosted Lewis for an unofficial visit earlier this summer, and the Sidwell Friends School (Washington D.C.) guard is expected to take an official visit to UK later this year.
Lewis told the Herald-Leader at Peach Jam he is planning to sign with a school during the November signing period, and he specified that something he liked about Kentucky was the NBA expertise found on the coaching staff.
That’s a clear reference to Hart, a nine-year NBA veteran who was also previously the head coach of the NBA’s G League Ignite team.
Pope and Hart are the lead recruiters for Lewis at Kentucky.
Lewis had 15 points on Friday night in a Team Durant loss.
Cody Fueger watches five-star guard Trey McKenney play
After Fueger and Hart watched the first EYBL game of Friday night’s recruiting period together, they went their separate ways inside the Riverview Park Activities Center.
Fueger crossed the hallway from one gym to another to check out a matchup between The Family and CP3, the EYBL program sponsored by NBA star Chris Paul.
The main attractions in this game were two class of 2025 prospects: Five-star shooting guard Trey McKenney and four-star combo guard Isaiah Denis.
McKenney (The Family) in particular has been a name to watch when it comes to UK recruiting. He had a double-double with 27 points and 12 rebounds in a 20-point blowout win for The Family.
UK previously watched McKenney at both the USA Basketball Men’s Under-18 National Team training camp in Colorado and at the FIBA Men’s Under-18 AmeriCup in Argentina earlier this summer.
Kentucky basketball assistants Cody Fueger, Jason Hart are at Peach Jam
When Friday night’s evaluation period began, a pair of UK basketball coaches were in the gym at Peach Jam.
Kentucky assistant coaches Cody Fueger and Jason Hart sat side by side to catch a game together in the first viewing window: Strive For Greatness (SFG) against Boo Williams.
The talent on display in this matchup was headlined by Brayden Burries , a five-star class of 2025 combo guard from California.
Burries didn’t disappoint either: He put up an efficient 30 points on 10-for-16 shooting from the field in a two-point SFG win, with plenty of college coaches watching on.
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