“He made me a priority" - Kentucky commit Acaden Lewis on HC Mark Pope's recruiting, adjustments with Wildcats and more (Exclusive)

Acaden Lewis didn’t expect Mark Pope to keep following him. Pope, who flew up to Washington D.C. to recruit Lewis, a four-star guard in the high school class of 2025, had just finished eating lunch with Lewis. At that point, Lewis expected them to part ways as he headed for a haircut.

But Kentucky’s headman didn’t leave, not yet at least. Pope asked Lewis if he could tag along, accompanying Lewis to his barbershop. Lewis was surprised at the request and sat in his barbershop chair while Pope made friends with the people inside while sitting at Lewis’s side.

“He made me a priority,” Lewis said of Pope.

Prioritizing Lewis helped sway him to commit to playing college basketball next season at Kentucky. Lewis fielded offers from some of the country’s storied programs — North Carolina, Duke, UConn and more — but landed with the first-year Wildcat coach.

Fast-forwarding to the morning of January 19, Pope sat in a mostly empty gym to watch Lewis’s high school team, Sidwell Friends School. Pope’s Wildcats had endured a narrow loss to their SEC rival Alabama the night before. Early next morning, Pope flew to Springfield, Massachusetts to watch his prized commit play at Hoophall.

Lewis had committed to Kentucky for over two months before Hoophall. Pope didn’t have to spend his morning watching his future point guard and texting updates to Acaden’s father, Jarrett Lewis, who watched on a choppy livestream from his bedroom.

His dedication echoed conversations the Lewis family had with Pope and his staff about gratitude, appreciation, and sacrifice, values that aligned with those Jarrett instilled in Acaden throughout his life.

“He reinforced those words with his commitment,” Jarrett Lewis said of Pope.

Pope’s commitment to Acaden rewarded Lewis’s efforts to develop into one of the country's best guards. This past summer, Lewis starred for Team Durant on the Nike EYBL circuit, averaging 16.6 points and 5.5 assists per game.

Lewis blends a creative handle, scoring touch and passing vision like few other guards in his class. He’s focused on honing this creativity, working to become the best creator he can be. A live defender, or sometimes multiple, always tracks Lewis in his workouts, forcing him to explore more creative, unorthodox solutions to problems on the court.

“Instincts are built, you don’t just come up with instincts anywhere,” Lewis said. “You kind of put yourself in enough situations where it’s uncomfortable to the point where it gets comfortable.”

When defenses trap and double Lewis, he’ll often punish them with manipulative dribbling and passing. Lewis credits his coaches and inner circle for instilling confidence to play and work through mistakes, even during games where he isn’t at his sharpest.

“I want to get trapped [on the court because I have enough trust in myself that I can manipulate traps and get around bigs if I need.”

At Kentucky, Lewis will operate off of the ball more than he ever has before. Mark Pope runs a motion-heavy, egalitarian offense and Lewis won’t play with the basketball in his hands as much as he previously has and knows he must improve as an off-ball player.

“In the summer, people didn’t want me to touch the ball because usually I made something happen,” Lewis said. “Back door [cuts] and reading top locks and stuff like that will be big for me because a lot of dudes are trying to keep the ball out of my hands right now.”

He hasn’t played with many high-level passers to this point, especially not big men, which Kentucky’s offense features heavily.

“You’ll see in Pope’s offense now, bigs relieve a lot of pressure,” Lewis said. “I won’t always have to have the ball because I can give it to my five-man and let him make reads and I can cut off ball and make open shots.”

Lewis won’t suppress his gifts with the basketball, though. He knows his talent with the ball contributed to his high-profile status as a recruit and his eventual commitment to Kentucky.

“I want to be poised, efficient but still creative and fun to watch,” Lewis said. “I want people to want to come see me and my teammates play…I think people just love watching me play and seeing the stuff I can do with the ball.”

His basketball theatrics weren’t always second nature for Lewis. In fact, his gifts on the court are far from natural.

Acaden grew up playing soccer, not playing organized basketball until the end of elementary school. Lewis wasn’t naturally talented at basketball, struggling to make his mark playing in local rec leagues. Jarrett never expected Lewis to take basketball as far as he did.

“He was the worst basketball player in America,” Jarrett said of a young Acaden.

But Acaden quickly compensated for his lack of physical gifts with a relentless work ethic. As a child, Acaden watched his father train local high school basketball players, picking up on the intensity of each session. Jarrett was, in his own words, “a lunatic” when it came to training.

After Acaden’s first season playing AAU basketball, where he struggled to succeed on the court, Jarrett expected this to be the end of his son’s basketball journey. But to his surprise, Acaden begged his father to train him, lunacy and all. All Lewis wanted was to grow as a basketball player.

“I saw the extremes he was willing to go to [to] be good,” Jarrett said.

Lewis spent countless hours training his stamina, footwork and touch among other staples for smaller guards. By eighth grade, Lewis began to show glimpses of the player he could become playing with Team Melo. He turned the ball over constantly then, but his energy and hustle kept him on the floor.

“He’d be a hell of a D3 player,” Jarrett thought to himself.

The Covid pandemic shutdowns limited many players’ ability to practice and train, but that time off only sharpened Acaden’s game. He worked out nonstop with trainer Kevin Kuteyi, better known as “Uncle Skoob,” online and then Maryland women’s basketball star Kaila Charles. Hours spent battling older, stronger and more experienced players helped Acaden develop into the player he is today.

Early in the process, Lewis leaned towards UConn as his preferred destination. He loved what coach Dan Hurley had accomplished. The Huskies were Lewis’s first blue blood offer, so he felt connected to them for that. But Lewis saved the best of his visit, his eventual landing spot in Lexington, for last.

“I was blown away,” Lewis said of his visit to Kentucky. “[I loved] the system, how the guys interacted with each other, I loved how everything in the huddle acts. The culture there is just different.”

More than anything, Lewis felt Pope and Kentucky's love and care for him. Pope spent hours with Lewis and his family, flying up to Washington, D.C., for consecutive weeks. Pope could have spent his time recruiting other guards or practicing with his own Kentucky squad, but he chose to focus on Lewis instead.

“I felt like he’s not doing this all for nothing, Lewis said. “He’s not taking private jets every week to come eat Nando’s with me and go do random activities … as a person, he impressed me.”

Lewis began his senior season watching from the sidelines while rehabbing an ankle injury that kept him from the court. Even when Lewis played, he couldn’t impact the game with his usual power and force. But that didn’t sway Kentucky’s commitment to Lewis. If anything, his resilience in the face of hardship reinforced their decision.

Acaden opened up to Jason Hart, one of Kentucky’s lead assistant coaches, about his struggles with confidence after the injury. Jarrett felt Kentucky’s little actions, like Pope’s presence at one of Acaden’s first games back from injury at Hoophall, aligned with their emphasis on struggle and failure.

“He relentlessly fights to overcome failure,” Jarrett said of Acaden.

Lewis knows he’ll continue to fail along the way. But failure has always been an integral part of his plan, of Jarrett’s plan for his son’s development. Lewis’s relatively late start to basketball and lack of elite physical tools meant he had to close the gap between other players his age in some other manner. That manner, for Jarrett, was a constant imposing of failure.

“We’ve done nothing to make this easy on him,” Jarrett said. “I want him to feel like shit. I want him to think about it. I want him to toss and turn about it.”

With Acaden unable to play for his high school team, he took the chance to improve his mental acumen and his leadership. Normally, Lewis leads by example, motivating his teammates with his actions rather than words. His injury forced the normally even-keeled Lewis to adapt his style.

"I had to kind of switch it up,” Lewis said of his leadership from the bench. “I had to cuss a couple of guys out…it brought a different side out of me.”

Unlike his future college team, his Sidwell Friends squad doesn’t feature multiple future pros and high-level Division One college players. Oftentimes, that led Lewis to dominate the ball and carry the creation load for his team, but Lewis’s time offered a sobering realization about his role as a leader on the court.

“While I’m off the court, the ball moves a little bit better which is hard to admit,” Lewis said. “You want to say when I’m on the court everything is super seamless but my teammates actually moved the ball a little bit better, which is what you kind of see in the NBA. Sometimes when guys like Ja Morant get hurt, the ball is a little more snappy and other guys step up.”

Rather than denying reality, Lewis cherishes the opportunity to watch his teammates evolve in his absence. What some teenagers view as a moment of vulnerability or disappointment, Lewis will take to reach his goals, whether that be making the McDonald’s All-American game, starting at Kentucky, or eventually making the NBA.

When Lewis inevitably faces roadblocks at the college level, he’ll lean on the foundation of resiliency he’s forged over many years of hard work, hoping Kentucky will be the perfect environment for his growth.

“I think it’s a great system for a point guard to be in because Pope seems to have a lot of trust in me,” Lewis said. “It’s been like that since he first started recruiting me.”