Under John Calipari, Kentucky basketball held international influence on the recruiting trail. In total, 20 players born outside the United States have played in a game for the Wildcats. Of those, 14 played for UK during the 15 seasons when Calipari was the head coach.
Calipari had players from the likes of Canada, New Zealand and Sudan all suit up for Kentucky during his time on the bench. The overall number will grow to 22 players once the 2024-25 season gets underway: incoming transfer portal additions Kerr Kriisa, a guard from Estonia, and Amari Williams, a forward from England, were both born outside the U.S. While new UK coach Mark Pope isn’t expected to bring the exact same kind of recruiting prowess as Calipari to the table, Pope has quickly alleviated concerns that he wouldn’t be going all-in on the recruiting trail. Part of this has come from the wide net Pope has already cast as he begins to recruit class of 2025 and 2026 players to Kentucky.
Included in this group is a highly touted international prospect. Last Monday night, class of 2025 five-star small forward Dwayne Aristode reported a scholarship offer from the Wildcats. The interlocking UK logo made an appearance among several other schools in Aristode’s graphic of reported scholarship offers: Kentucky is among 15 schools and joined by the likes of Alabama, Duke, Kansas and UConn.
Born in The Netherlands, Aristode has multiple years of past playing experience in Spain with Club Joventut Badalona, a Catalonia-based basketball club, as well as on the international stage with the Dutch national team. Aristode rose to prominence during the 2022 FIBA Under-16 European Championship, where he averaged 15.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and 3.1 assists while also shooting 37.5% from 3-point range in seven games for The Netherlands. Now, Aristode plays at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire (part of the Nike EYBL scholastic league) and for Massachusetts-based Expressions Elite on the Nike EYBL circuit.
