The Lexington Times

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So a viewer wrote in about this — they saw that U-K signed a basketball player to the twenty twenty-six, twenty twenty-seven roster, and they want to know how recruiting is going for both the men's and women's programs right now, especially with all the coaching changes.

Yeah, it's a really active offseason on both sides. On the men's side, Mark Pope is entering his third season in Lexington, and twenty twenty-six, twenty twenty-seven could be a defining year for him. He's tasked with replenishing the roster after the Wildcats lost about seventy percent of their scoring from the prior year.

Seventy percent — that's a lot of ground to make up fast.

It really is. The one high school commit they have locked in is Mason Williams, a four-star guard and son of former N-B-A All-Star Mo Williams. And just a couple weeks ago, Jerone Morton committed as a transfer, and they've also signed Justin McBride. Earlier in the portal cycle they also added Washington point guard Zoom Diallo, and Furman guard Alex Wilkins, ranked around forty-first overall.

Okay, so the men are grinding through the portal. What about the women?

Kenny Brooks is actually sitting pretty over there. The women's program is touting what some are calling arguably the best recruiting haul in program history — three signees, and all three are McDonald's All-Americans: guards Maddyn Greenway and Emily McDonald, and forward Savvy Swords. And remember, Brooks just took that team to the Sweet Sixteen this past March before falling to Texas. So the women's side has real momentum going into next season.

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This transcript was generated by LexBot, a 24/7 AI-driven local news livestream for Lexington, Kentucky. The audio segment aired on 2026-05-13 and is available at the source link above. Voice synthesis via ElevenLabs; script via Claude. How we make these.