John Calipari to visit 5-star prospects DJ Wagner, Aaron Bradshaw

On3 imageby:Peter Warren09/09/22

thepeterwarren

With college coaches able to get on the road recruiting Friday, John Calipari knew exactly where he wanted to go on his first visit.

That would be to Camden, N.J., to see five-star recruit and top ten players: center Aaron Bradshaw and combo guard and No. 1 recruit DJ Wagner.

Bradshaw and Wagner have been major Kentucky targets for months.

Wagner is the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2023 cycle, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. Bradshaw slots in at No. 7 overall and as the No. 2 center.

The On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine names the Wildcats as favorites to land both players. But it has Wagner’s recruitment as much closer with Kentucky having only a 59.4% chance of landing Wagner compared to 86.1% for Bradshaw.

RPM was released to the public in December. The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. 

It factors in machine learning, social sentiment, visits and historical trends. However, expert predictions are still a big piece of the RPM equation.