Kentucky will have to shift their attention to their other top point guard targets in the 2026 class. On Friday, 2026 top 5 overall prospect Jason Crowe Jr. committed to the Missouri Tigers, he announced live on 247 Sports. Mark Pope and the Wildcats were firmly in the lead for a couple of months, but a surprising late push by Dennis Gates and Missouri was enough to secure the five-star guard.
Crowe Jr. was long seen as a Kentucky lean for much of his recruitment given his ties to Kentucky assistant coach Jason Hart, who his dad played with all through high school in Inglewood, CA, the same school the top 5 guard attended. That was a big selling point for Kentucky in this recruitment, a very close and lifelong connection between the Crowe family and Hart. It came as a surprise when it was found that Kentucky had lost essentially all of its momentum down the stretch, as On3’s Joe Tipton was the first to break the news that Kentucky “is not even really in the picture” in an interview with KSR’s Jacob Polacheck. The Tigers gained control quickly and left a huge gap between them and schools like USC and Texas, who were also in contention.
As for what Kentucky does now, the Wildcats still have top point guard targets Brandon McCoy Jr., Deron Rippey Jr., Jordan Smith Jr. and Tay Kinney that they can push hard for. As for Kinney and Rippey, those are looking like the more likely options at the moment. With Kinney, Kentucky is trailing Louisville, but has time to make up ground there. The same goes for Smith, as the Wildcats can always keep pushing with him, given that he hasn’t even stepped on campus for a visit yet. As for Rippey, the Wildcats are in a very, very good position with him and seem to be ramping up the interest fast, making him much more of a top priority among guard targets in the class.
Kentucky lost out on Crowe Jr. what seemed like very quickly, but the staff still is in a good spot with a number of top guards in 2026.
