Top-10 Recruit Trey Lyles Chooses Kentucky Over Louisville

As if the Louisville vs. Kentucky in-state basketball rivalry wasn’t intense enough, the Cardinals suffered a loss to the Wildcats on Tuesday after highly-touted prep forward Trey Lyles, a top-10 senior who was once an Indiana-commit, picked John Calipari’s program over Rick Pitino. Just last week, Devin Booker, one of the nation’s top sharp-shooters, also announced his intentions of hooping in Lexington next fall.  From the Courier-Journal: “Five-star power forward Trey Lyles announced his commitment to the University of Kentucky basketball team on Tuesday, giving coach John Calipari an important frontcourt piece to his 2014 class and a recruiting victory over rival Louisville. The 6-foot-9 Lyles, one of the nation’s most highly skilled big men, pledged to UK over the Cards on his 18th birthday during a nationally televised announcement at his school, Arsenal Tech, citing Calipari’s recent success of sending players to the NBA early and often as a major reason. “(The NBA) is where I want to be,” Lyles said, in reference to the 22 former UK players on NBA rosters. “Those 20 NBA players (from UK), that’s just giving me a more, higher percentage of being able to play in the NBA… (Calipari) thinks that with my talents and my ability that he’ll be able to get me into the NBA as early as I want to go.”