Mark Pope is searching far and wide in the 2025 class for which players he wants to be in his first true recruiting class. Over the last few weeks, the staff has reached out to recruits, gone to camps, and offered a ton of players.

One of the players Coach Pope is recruiting is five-star Tounde Yessoufou, who is ranked as the 21st best player in the 2025 class according to 247Sports composite rankings. Recently, Yessoufou announced that he plans to take a bunch of visits, with one of them being to Kentucky. Yessoufou is currently on a visit to USC but also plans to visit Tennessee, Kansas, Baylor, UCLA, and Ole Miss on top of a stop in Lexington.

Yessoufou told On3’s Jamie Shaw about Coach Pope and his early thoughts on Kentucky’s new coach: “Right away, when I talked to Coach Pope, I saw that he has a lot of energy. I mean I like him a lot, and he has the experience. He used to be a Kentucky player and in the NBA.”

It sounds like, despite Kentucky being late in on this recruitment, Coach Pope is making a good impression with Yessoufou. The 6’5 wing is a really good slasher who would be elite at getting to the rim in Coach Pope’s system. Yessoufou taking the ball to the cup would also lead to some open threes, which is what the system is based on.

Yessoufou is a name for Big Blue Nation to monitor as Coach Pope starts to get players in the 2025 class on campus for visits.