LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The commitment of Aaron Bradshaw of Camden, N.J., to the University of Kentucky before Big Blue Madness on Friday night provided Wildcats’ coach John Calipari with a mic drop moment in the first major recruiting battle with his former top assistant, new Louisville coach Kenny Payne.
For Louisville, it is a loss. There’s no way around that. For some time, the Cardinals have seemed all but out of the running for Bradshaw’s celebrated teammate, Camden guard D.J. Wagner. The grandson of Cardinal legend (and new director of basketball operations) Milt Wagner has entered deals with Nike and recruiting experts now believe he is poised to join Bradshaw at UK in due time.
Both are Top 5 players nationally. Bradshaw’s commitment gives Calipari a pair of top 5 players in the 2023 class and three of the top 8 already. Wagner would add more star power to that haul.
If Payne entered the recruiting sweepstakes for the pair late, he was not without some potential advantages. The program director of the NJ Scholars EYBL team is a former teammate of Payne’s, U of L Hall of Famer Pervis Ellison, and Payne had only to walk down the hallway to see Wagner’s grandfather every day.
Blood may be thicker than water, but in recruiting it is no substitute for brand.
Louisville basketball coach Kenny Payne leaves the court after a "Meet the Coaches" event at the KFC Yum! Center on June 13, 2022.
As the recruitment wore on, it seemed Bradshaw was the player Louisville had a better shot at, and that would’ve been fine with most Louisville fans. The 7-footer at times was the best player on the court for the Scholars.
His abrupt commitment to Kentucky, along with Wagner’s expected decision, illustrate the challenges Payne faces, and the program Calipari has built.
Some may point to the influence of name, image and likeness money as a factor in recruitment, but it’s about more than money. While Louisville remains in NCAA purgatory, still working to stabilize from scandal and a failed coaching experiment in Chris Mack, it has support groups in place such that recruits of the caliber of these can make as much from NIL endorsements as they would anywhere else, including Kentucky.
It's less about bucks than brand. Kentucky has it, Louisville is rebuilding it. And that’s an issue.
It is a name brand, one of perhaps 5 in college basketball, along with Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and perhaps UCLA. Of the past 75 NCAA championships, those 5 are one win shy of owning half of them. The rest are split among everyone else.
Kentucky is not only a name brand in college basketball, it is a national brand. Its fans show up everywhere. It moves the needle in television ratings. By any metric, it compares favorably to the most widespread brands in college sports. Calipari, a marketing major in college, is adept at keeping the program in the national conversation, never more so than in its current 7-year absence from the Final Four.
And Kentucky is a Nike brand, one of the shoe company’s flagship college programs. As the biggest player in basketball in the U.S. and the world’s largest sports retailer, Nike exerts influence, and brings exposure, not to mention its grassroots basketball operations that identify elite talent at a young age.
All of this, along with Calipari’s track record for escorting top players from prep stardom to the NBA Draft — and his continued support of them afterward — make Kentucky a safe bet.
Kentucky coach John Calipari drops the mic after speaking to the crowd at the program's 2022 Big Blue Madness event at Rupp Arena.
That doesn’t mean Louisville won’t get players. But it means the percentages are with Kentucky, as long as Louisville’s brand is damaged.
Kentucky is the blue-chip stock, the stable choice. It’s low-risk, high-reward. It’s comfortable. For Calipari and Kentucky, Bradshaw’s surprise commitment was business as usual.
“It's the best fit for me and has my best interest,” Bradshaw said. “I just want to get there and work hard to get where I want to go."
Payne knows he has brand building to do at Louisville. He’s working on the foundations of culture. He has a vision. He needs to be a disruptor. Landing one of the Camden pair would've fired that effort up. By all appearances, he'll have to find a way elsewhere.
“Kentucky has already been successful, and they continue to be successful. It's a factory,” Payne said last week at ACC Media Day. “I have to make sure that I bring our part up. I want the rivalry to be respectful, but I also want it to be competitive. And that's big shoes to fill. Kentucky's hot. Calipari is a Hall of Fame coach. And a lot of lives have changed through that university. I want to do the same. I want to change lives. I want kids to be successful. I want examples of why you come to Louisville, why you come play for my staff and myself. But I don't want it to be just about me. If I do that, that's not who I am.”
Until Payne builds those success stories, recruiting at the top of the ladder will be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Payne has gotten Louisville into doors that it hasn’t gotten into for a while. The key will be making sure those players have success once they get to Louisville.
Recruiting misses, of course, can have long-lasting impact. For Louisville, the cost is especially high when its archrival benefits. Rick Pitino having Sebsatian Telfair slip away to the NBA was a fateful turn of events. That he backed away from Rajon Rondo to swing for the Telfair fence compounded the loss. Rondo wound up at Kentucky, and Pitino wound up taking a point guard named Andre McGee.
Losing Bradshaw and (potentially) Wagner in his first high-stakes showdown with Calipari and Kentucky is less a killer loss than a lost opportunity for Payne. Either one of those players in Louisville would’ve immediately lifted the image of the program and established valuable momentum.
If both wind up in Lexington, it means there will be no short cut for Payne. He’ll still get good players, and perhaps elite players. But the shock-and-awe opportunity of his first true class is somewhat diminished.
For Louisville, it’s also what the program hopes will be a final remnant of its recent NCAA troubles. The school continues to wait for a ruling from the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process, 5 years after the FBI showed up on campus as part of a national prosecution of college basketball corruption.
It’s still far too easy to recruit against Louisville, and as Payne is discovering, there is no hesitation about doing it – even by people who are his friends. Business is business. It’s still too easy to tell recruits to be wary, that the brand is damaged, that they might miss college basketball’s most visible event, that Payne is an unknown quantity, that they’re risking their futures. It’s still a Nike power play, too, and is going to be.
All of these things are facts for Kenny Payne, as is Bradshaw’s surprise decision.
Somewhere, Mack is probably nodding his head. He got criticism for not courting Ellison more. Turns out, no amount of friendship was likely to make much difference.
These are business decisions. All Payne can do is get down to the business of building — and winning.
His message to fans as he does that, he delivered in a response in Charlotte last week.
“I've been around a lot of winning. And it's not easy,” he said. “If winning was so easy, everybody would be winning. Everybody would be winning. Everybody talks about it. Everybody reads books about it. Everybody studies it. Then why isn't everybody winning? You have to do something different. It's a process to win. Enjoy the process. I'm asking our fans, that it may not be great right off the bat. Enjoy the process. Enjoy with me. Coach with me. Love these guys with me. Support these guys with me.
“Now, I feel like at times, just judging by what the community says, that, 'Kenny there are going to be people that jump off the Titanic.' And I'm going be looking and laughing because in a press conference, I said, 'I need you.' And I want to see who jumps off that Titanic. And then who tries to ask for the life vest when it's successful. And I'm OK with that. That's the nature of the business. That's the nature of life. People are going to jump on and off the bandwagon. I wish that they would all just stay with us and support it. That's not reality. There are true fans and then there's fair-weather fans. I just want these kids to have the version of Louisville that I experienced, where it was about love and about community. It was about supporting when it was down and enjoying the times when it's up.”
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