For weeks, the talk around 5-star forward Christian Collins was that Kentucky was in a great spot. A “heavy lean” was the phrase getting tossed around, the kind of recruiting smoke that usually has fans refreshing their feeds every five minutes waiting for the graphic. Some even suggested it was done, and all that was left was for UK and JMI to hammer out the contract.
Now that the buzz is cooling, the tone around Collins has shifted from confident to cautious.
Christian Collins cooling on Kentucky Basketball?
KSR’s Jacob Polacheck previously reported that contract negotiations were the holdup in why Collins hasn’t signed with Kentucky yet.
“Speaking with sources, it sounds like the conversations, while still ongoing, have stalled a little. I am told that Kentucky still is in the mix, but recently USC has been brought up some as well. Sources I am speaking with are still watching Kentucky, but they are not as confident in their conversations as they were before the early signing period,” wrote Shaw.
That’s not panic language, but it’s not the tone you want when you’re chasing a top-10 type talent who was once thought to be right on the edge of pulling the trigger.
It also doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
You’ve got Tyran Stokes’ recruitment, which has turned so cloudy that no one seems truly sure where he’s going. You’ve got zero commitments for 2026 right now. And you’ve got a recent stretch where Mark Pope keeps landing in the final three or four for elite recruits… only to watch them pick someone else.
On paper, you can talk yourself into patience:
- The transfer portal is a massive factor now.
- Kentucky can bring back a chunk of this current roster.
- High school recruiting isn’t the only way to build a contender anymore.
All of that is true. But it’s also true that if you’re going to live in the deep end of the sport, you still need to actually win some of these blue-chip battles, not just make the hat table.
The Collins situation is even trickier because of the context.
West Coast kids are historically tougher pulls for schools this far east; sometimes it really is just geography and comfort. But there’s also been noise that Collins was ready to commit, and things got hung up around NIL — a dangerous phrase in 2025 if it becomes a pattern.
This is all happening at the same time:
- The SCORE Act failed to pass, leaving NIL in a messy patchwork of rules.
- Kentucky’s corporate and NIL structure, including the JMI deal and how money actually flows to players, is being openly questioned by people trying to understand how competitive the Wildcats really are behind the scenes.
Put that together, and you get the obvious fear: Is Kentucky’s NIL operation making it harder to close on the very players Pope is targeting?
We don’t have a final answer on Collins yet. He hasn’t committed anywhere, and Kentucky is still “being watched” by people in the know. But what was once framed as almost inevitable now feels much more fragile.
If Collins stays home out West? You can live with that once.
If Stokes goes elsewhere, Collins goes elsewhere, and the 2026 board stays empty while the on-court product struggles?
Then it stops being bad luck and starts looking like a structural problem.
For now, the only fair thing to say is this: Christian Collins to Kentucky is no longer the near-lock it once sounded like, and in the bigger picture of where this program wants to go, that should make a lot of people in Lexington uncomfortable.
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Drew Holbrook who has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion