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Hot on the heels of their victory over defending national champion Duke on Tuesday night in Chicago, Kentucky got even more good news on Wednesday.
Malik Monk has committed to Kentucky and will sign his National Letter of Intent on Wednesday, giving the Wildcats the No. 1-ranked recruiting class, according to Scout.com.
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The 6-foot-3 Monk out of Bentonville (AR) considered several other schools, but in-state Arkansas was the main challenger.
Monk joins fellow point guard De’Aaron Fox along with big men Bam Adebayo, Sacha Killeya-Jones and Wenyen Gabriel in Kentucky’s class.
Kentucky now has three projected Top 10 picks in the 2017 NBA Draft according to DraftExpress.com in No. 4 Fox, No. 7 Monk and No. 10 Adebayo.
Meantime, Kentucky point guards Tyler Ulis, Isaiah Briscoe and Jamal Murray could all depart for the NBA, paving the way for Fox and Monk to take over in 2016-17. Murray is projected as the No. 6 pick by DraftExpress.com and Briscoe at No. 18.
Kentucky will also likely return guards Mychal Mulder, Charles Matthews and Dominique Hawkins.
Fox recently talked to Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com about teaming up with Monk.
“Oh yeah I do [think we could play together], we’ve talked about it,” Fox said at the recent USA Basketball mini-camp in Colorado. “We were in the Bahamas together. We were there for a couple days together. We talked about the recruiting process. It’s not set in stone that we’ll go to the same school but it’s a possibility.”
Fox specifically highlighted Kentucky’s past success with two point guards in his interview with Givony.
“Some point guards want to play together,” Fox said. “Some twos are coming into point guards, guys talk about playing together at the next level. At Kentucky with John Wall and Eric Bledsoe, they’re both point guards in the NBA and they both came together at Kentucky. Guys want to play together, guys want to play with elite players at their position. It’s competitive every day. You don’t want to go to a practice and it’s not competitive, you just run through people.
“With all of our elite guards, people are going to try to play together and try to get to the NBA together.”
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