Louisville basketball: With two scholarships left, three players are trending to the Cardinals

Mackenzie Mgbako – Five-Star Freshman – 6’8″ – 210 Pounds

Mackenzie Mgbako is one of the top unsigned high school seniors in the Class of 2023. On April 8, 2022, he committed to the Duke Blue Devils. But, almost a year later to the day on April 11, 2023, Mgbako de-committed from Duke University.

After Kyle Filipowski announced his return to the Blue Devils, the 6-foot-8 incoming freshman decided to re-open his recruitment, which made sense because both he and Filipowski play the same position.

The Top-10 player in the nation even signed the dotted line to play for Head Coach Jon Scheyer, but he was granted a release from his NLI and almost immediately he was tied to the University of Louisville. The largest connection to the Cardinals is Assistant Coach Nolan Smith, who helped recruit him to Duke prior to Smith leaving his post in Durham and accepting the position here at Louisville.

Another connection is Louisville’s ties to New Jersey Scholars AAU program, which is where Mgbako played his AAU basketball. One of the Directors of Player Development there, DaJuan Wagner, is the son of Louisville’s Director of Player Development, Milt Wagner.

With these obvious connections, Louisville and Mackenzie Mgbako were often found in the same sentence together. But, it never materialized past rumors for a long time until April 27th when Adam Zagoria dropped the list of schools he will take an official visit to:

As of now, he has completed his visits to both St. John’s and Kansas, meaning that Indiana is up-to-bat and Louisville is on deck. He is, reportedly, set to be on campus at Indiana University this weekend and will visit the University of Louisville next week. There are many advantages to Louisville having the last visit such as having the last recruiting pitch before he commits, offering whatever he needs to feel comfortable about playing here, and having a person of familiarity to him on staff here in Nolan Smith.

Louisville currently has a Top-3 recruiting class, but if they land two of the three guys in this article, they will move up to No. 2, right behind their bitter rival, the Kentucky Wildcats.