In the case of North Laurel basketball star Reed Sheppard, the announcement Monday that he would be revealing his college decision Saturday morning has done nothing to hurt Kentucky’s standing in his recruitment. In fact, it’s only reinforced UK’s status as the frontrunner to land his commitment.
Coming into the week, the Cats had all 11 predictions across Sheppard’s 247Sports Crystal Ball page and his Rivals.com FutureCast page. Most of those came around the time UK extended a scholarship offer in July, though there were still rumblings then that some other programs, particularly Virginia, might still have a legitimate shot of pulling the UK legacy recruit away from Lexington.
Now that a commitment date has been set, more experts are lining up in favor of Kentucky, which picked up additional predictions Monday from Rivals.com national analyst Jamie Shaw and 247Sports analyst Travis Branham, who has been covering Sheppard’s recruitment closely.