{"id":734007,"date":"2026-05-14T08:51:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/734007\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T08:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:51:17","slug":"luigi-suigo-says-kentucky-didnt-want-to-risk-recruiting-him-due-to-nba-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/734007\/","title":{"rendered":"Luigi Suigo Says Kentucky Didn&#8217;t Want to &#8216;Risk&#8217; Recruiting Him Due to NBA Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/luigi-suigo-249644\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Luigi Suigo<\/a>, a 7-foot-3 center from Mega Superbet of the Serbian League and ABA League, is a player that\u2019s been on Kentucky\u2019s radar for years. However, as he goes through the NBA Combine, Suigo tells reporters it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/KevinConnelly24\/status\/2054614784012583264?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">likely he\u2019ll go to Villanova or BYU<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>So, why has Kentucky fallen off in that recruitment? Suigo told reporters that several schools, including Kentucky, didn\u2019t want to risk recruiting him if he stayed in the NBA Draft. Other schools included in that position are St. John\u2019s, Duke, and North Carolina, per Kevin Connelly of Sports Illustrated. <\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Suigo added that Rick Pitino saw him practice in Italy. He said St. John\u2019s, Duke, Kentucky, and UNC are schools who didn\u2019t want to take the risk of recruiting him if stays in the NBA Draft and would be left trying to fill that position <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SJUBB?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#SJUBB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Kevin Connelly (@KevinConnelly24) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinConnelly24\/status\/2054616225011974254?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">May 13, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Villanova has had a lot of buzz in Suigo\u2019s recruitment during the NBA Draft process. <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DraftExpress\/status\/2054299945985851645?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jonathan Givony of Draft Express posted on Tuesday<\/a> that he \u201cappears to be Villanova-bound.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>However, there\u2019s still the prospect of staying in the draft. Suigo told <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CBB_Central\/status\/2054617654774677647?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">Kevin Sweeney of Sports Illustrated<\/a> that while the NBA is his top priority, he\u2019d need to be \u201cprobably top 20\u201d in this draft to not go to college next year. <\/p>\n<p>Instead of waiting on Suigo to make his NBA Draft decision, Kentucky will be awaiting one from another center. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/malachi-moreno-162537\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Malachi Moreno<\/a> continues to go through the draft process, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/teams\/kentucky-wildcats\/news\/malachi-moreno-will-not-scrimmage-at-the-nba-draft-combine-after-all\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hasn\u2019t been scrimmaging<\/a>. His draft decision is one Big Blue Nation will be watching closely over these next couple of weeks. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/sites\/kentucky-wildcats\/join\/?plan=annual\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Want more Kentucky basketball intel? Join KSR Plus for access to bonus content and KSBoard and House of Blue, the most vibrant message board communities in BBN, to chat with fellow Cats fans and get exclusive scoop.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luigi Suigo, a 7-foot-3 center from Mega Superbet of the Serbian League and ABA League, is a player&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,90793,6],"class_list":["post-734007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-luigi-suigo-26-olimpia-milano","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116572080259587293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}