Asa Montgomery’s summer turned into a national showcase, and Kentucky is already in the mix.
The 6-foot-7 small forward from Hillgrove High School in Powder Springs, Georgia, picked up a UK scholarship offer in late July, putting him among 22 players in the high school senior class with a Kentucky offer. He’s a 17-year-old four-star prospect, ranked by 247Sports as the No. 42 overall player in the 2027 class.
What makes Montgomery so interesting is the way he produced in two completely different settings. With Athletes of Tomorrow in the Nike Elite Youth Champions League, he was the guy driving everything. In international play, he came off the bench for the United States and still made a real impact as the Americans won the FIBA Under-17 World Cup title in Turkey.
His EYCL numbers were loud. Montgomery led the league in scoring during the regular season at 27.9 points per game, while also averaging 10.2 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.9 blocks.
He shot 61.5% on 2-pointers and 34.2% from 3. Even with 2.7 turnovers per game, the role demanded a lot from him as a ball-dominant scorer.
New Kentucky assistant coach Mo Williams watched Montgomery this summer with AOT, and Hillgrove coach Greg Moultrie said Williams saw a player who has sharpened the parts of his game that matter most. “You can set a pick for Asa and he can come off the ball screen and he’s going to make the right read.
Or he’s going to go to the rack. Or he’s going to take what (the defense) gives him.
So he’s going to make the right basketball play with the ball as well,” Moultrie said, adding that Montgomery is a “basketball savant.”
Moultrie also pointed to Montgomery’s mindset. “His unselfishness when he plays.
You got a lot of times guys, (who are) four or five-star guys, they want to take every shot. Asa is okay not taking every shot.
He’s a great team player.”
The USA Basketball portion of the summer showed a different version of Montgomery. He earned a spot on the U.S. roster after a six-day training camp in Colorado, making the team as one of 12 players from a group of 36 tryout participants. Over seven games at the World Cup, he worked in a bench role at power forward and helped in ways that don’t always jump off the page - cutting, defending multiple spots and fitting into winning basketball.
Montgomery’s length is a big part of why he keeps climbing. He has a nearly 7-foot wingspan, and Moultrie said he uses it on both ends.
“Whether that’s using his length to shoot over the top of a defender, whether he uses his length to get to the rack and finish with authority, with both hands at the rim,” Moultrie said. “Also, he uses his length defensively, to block shots, and he uses his length to get rebounds.
So I think he understands his size and his length. He doesn’t play small.”
Even in a reduced role, Montgomery still produced efficiently for the Americans. He averaged 9.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 2.1 assists in Turkey, shot 86.7% from inside the 3-point line, and committed just 0.4 turnovers per game, the fewest among American players.
Moultrie has watched that growth up close for years. He remembers Montgomery dribbling a basketball when he was 3 or 4 years old, and he believes the work has finally matched the talent.
“You see a lot of kids that are good, are better than kids that age early on, and they kind of burn out or other kids work just as hard and they eventually catch up with the skills. But Asa has always worked,” Moultrie said.
“... Now you see tremendous growth in his game.
I think the light bulb really went off for him this summer. He played on a whole other level this summer.”
Moultrie also has experience projecting players to the next level, having coached Jeremiah Wilkinson at Hillgrove before Wilkinson became a top transfer portal addition this offseason for John Calipari’s Arkansas program. And he sees Montgomery on a similar path if the development keeps moving.
“He can shoot the ball... And then at the same time he can use his length to get stops defensively,” Moultrie said.
“I think what makes him a prize as well on that college level is his ability to rebound. As each school has seen following him, he’s going to do whatever is needed to help the team win.”
Montgomery’s recruitment is picking up fast now. On Thursday afternoon, 247Sports reported that he has set eight official visits for the fall, running from late August through late October. Kentucky is not on that list.
His scheduled visits are LSU, Florida, Connecticut, Providence, North Carolina, Duke, Arizona and Louisville.
Montgomery wasn’t the only 2027 Kentucky target to put out a visit schedule this week. Five-star center Darius Wabbington also announced a fall tour that includes Indiana, Louisville, Arizona, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas. Kentucky had been in Wabbington’s original top six, but the Wildcats were replaced by Illinois.
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