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Could Kentucky be poised to land the highest-ranked commitment of the Mark Pope era and its first top-5 prospect since 2023.
Inglewood (Calif.) 5-star combo guard Jason Crowe Jr. is set to announce his college decision.
The No. 5 overall prospect in the 2026 class according to 247Sports, Crowe will announce his commitment on his birthday, July 18, his father tells Joe Tipton of On3 Sports.
Crowe, who has not announced a list cut or a list of finalists, holds scholarship offers from the likes of Alabama, Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Baylor, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Texas, UCLA, USC, Villanova, and Washington among others.
The trepidation among additional schools to offer Crowe could be because his father, Jason Crowe Sr., is lifelong friends with UK assistant Jason Hart. Like Hart, Crowe Sr. is from Inglewood, Calif. and attended Inglewood High School before going on to enjoy a lengthy professional basketball career overseas.
The Wildcats extended a scholarship offer to Crowe last August and Pope, Hart and the UK staff conducted an in-home visit with Crowe and his family in April. Pope also coached Crowe at the USA U19 trials in Colorado Springs last month.
"You gotta keep that family aspect in play. If you can't trust family, who can you trust?" Crowe said during an interview with incoming Kentucky freshman Jasper Johnson. "[Kentucky] fits around my play style, I shoot a lot of 3s, play fast, good pace. It's a school I could see myself in."
Should he pick Kentucky, Crowe would become the Wildcats' highest-ranked commitment since Aaron Bradshaw, also ranked No. 5 overall by 247Sports, in 2023.
Playing for the Oakland Soldiers, Crowe leads the prestigious Nike EYBL circuit in scoring, averaging 22.4 points to go along with 4.7 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.1 steals over 11 games this travel season, where he teams alongside No. 1 overall prospect and fellow Kentucky target Tyran Stokes.
Crowe has scored 20 or more points in eight of 11 games in the EYBL this travel season while also recording a pair of 30-point games.
247Sports Director of Scouting Adam Finkelstein described Crowe as one of the best and most prolific scorers in the country.
"The southpaw guard is such a gifted scorer of the basketball. Crowe is skilled, crafty, and has an advanced understanding of how to operate with the ball. In high school, he's responsible for creating the offense in the vast majority of possessions. In the EYBL, though, when he's teaming with [Tyran] Stokes, he's still learning to pick his spots just a bit," Finkelstein wrote in May.
"He is playing with extremely high volume. It's not that he's not capable of creating for others. He certainly is. He makes quality pick-and-roll reads and punishes defenses for sending secondary defenders. It's only that his mindset is to create to start virtually every possession, and he's still learning how to play without the ball in his hands. He's already, arguably, the most potent scoring guard in the class, and has another level he can get to by picking his spots and making himself a threat off the ball."