One of the early reservations that came with Kentucky’s hiring of Mark Pope as its next basketball coach was Pope’s lack of experience recruiting top-tier college basketball prospects.
Part of that was born from the unique recruiting circumstances that accompanied Pope’s prior head coaching jobs at Utah Valley and BYU. And regardless, few college basketball programs have the kind of recruiting cachet or resources that Kentucky does, and Pope hadn’t been in a position to utilize those on the recruiting trail before.
But Pope has quickly laid to rest any concerns about his recruiting approach with the Wildcats. And it started with one prospect in particular.
Last month brought the first major recruiting period for Pope and his coaching staff at Kentucky, as he, associate head coach Alvin Brooks III and assistant coaches Cody Fueger and Jason Hart fanned out across the country to watch prospects play.
The biggest concentration of talent that May weekend was at the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League stop in Indiana, and five-star class of 2025 power forward Tounde Yessoufou quickly emerged as a focus of UK’s recruiting activity at that event.
Last week, the Kentucky staff rolled four deep into another major recruiting event — the NBPA Top 100 Camp at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex just outside of Orlando, Florida — to get eyes on some of the best high school recruits in the country.
And that included another look at Yessoufou.
The 6-foot-6, 215-pound power forward was a notable performer at the NBPA Top 100 Camp, posting the second-highest scoring average (23.1 points per game) of any camp participant. Yessoufou also averaged 8.1 rebounds and 1.6 steals, both of which ranked among the highest marks at the event and allowed Yessoufou to be named one of the camp’s all-star performers.
“I bring the energy to the court every time I step on the floor,” Yessoufou said last week during the event. “I just feel like that’s when I have (an) impact on the game, get the other team in foul trouble and stuff like that.”
Ranked by the 247Sports Composite as the No. 20 overall player in the 2025 recruiting class, it’s easy to see what has colleges such as Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA interested in Yessoufou.
In addition to his standout showing at the NBPA Top 100 Camp, Yessoufou — who attends St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria, California — has also been a consistent performer on the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League circuit this spring for California-based Team WhyNot.
Yessoufou is among the EYBL’s leaders in points and rebounds through the regular season: He has scored 20 or more points on nine occasions for Team WhyNot through 15 games, often as part of hyper-efficient offensive performances.
“Lately I’ve been shooting the ball well,” Yessoufou said. “It’s opened up more of the game and I can do whatever I want.”
While Yessoufou still hasn’t reported a Kentucky scholarship offer, the interest between he and the Wildcats is both obvious and mutual. And given his home base in California’s Central Coast region, Yessoufou represents an early recruiting responsibility for Hart, who arrives on the UK coaching staff with plenty of California connections.
“I just like the way that they play. I feel like they play, kind of, my style,” Yessoufou said about Kentucky. “… I’ve been talking to Mark Pope and he’s been telling me how he likes my energy … The way that he’s been talking to me and stuff, he’s got so much energy and I can see myself in the future playing for that program.”
COLLEGE COACHES LIKE ENERGY PROVIDED BY TOUNDE YESSOUFOU
Yessoufou also represents another Kentucky basketball recruiting target for Mark Pope who hails from outside of the United States.
In addition to class of 2025 small forward Dwayne Aristode (who was born in The Netherlands and previously played in Spain), Yessoufou is originally from Benin in West Africa.
Yessoufou noted that Pope’s teams at BYU featured several African players in recent seasons, such as Atiki Ally Atiki (Tanzania), Gideon George (Nigeria), Aly Khalifa (Egypt) and Fousseyni Traore (Mali).
Yessoufou, who moved to California prior to his freshman high school season, indicated that he enjoyed seeing the diverse array of international players Pope had on several of his BYU rosters.
“I feel like he put them in a good position to just showcase themselves, and playing hard on defense and offense,” Yessoufou said.
Thus far, Yessoufou hasn’t made much headway in what’s become an increasingly crowded recruitment.
His official visits have been to Washington (under the previous Mike Hopkins-led coaching staff) and to Arizona earlier this week.
“Definitely the way I play hard,” Yessoufou said when asked what college coaches like about his game. “They say I have great energy … Offensive rebound, defensive rebound, just being able to help my teammates any way I can. And just keep playing hard every time. That’s one of the biggest things that they like about me.”
