UCLA Is Deep In The Fight For The Nations Top Recruit

Top prospect Kaleena Smith plans an extensive college tour, eyeing UCLA among 11 scheduled visits as she weighs her options for the next step in her basketball career.

Kaleena Smith’s recruitment is starting to take shape in a big way, and UCLA has landed one of the marquee stops on the 2027 star’s official visit tour.

Smith, the No. 1 player in the class, has lined up 11 official visits, a source told 247Sports’ Dushawn London on Monday. The Bruins are scheduled to host her on Oct. 30.

Her full slate runs from Washington on July 31 all the way through Texas A&M on Nov. 13.

In between, Smith will visit Baylor on Aug. 28, Oklahoma on Sept.

4, Georgia on Sept. 11, Tennessee on Sept.

25, Arizona State on Oct. 9, Miami on Oct.

16, USC on Oct. 23, UCLA on Oct.

30, UConn on Nov. 6 and Texas A&M on Nov. 13.

Smith had already set visits to Louisville, Cal, Syracuse, LSU and Notre Dame.

The buzz around Smith has been building for a while. She’s regarded as the consensus top-ranked recruit no matter the class, and her game has made that easy to understand.

When she played at Ontario Christian in December 2024, her shooting range and court vision were impossible to miss. She also made history as the first high school women’s basketball player to sign an NIL deal with Adidas.

UCLA got into the mix with an offer in August 2025, and Smith later took an unofficial visit to Westwood that November.

Brandon Clay, 247Sports’ Director of Scouting for Women’s Basketball, had this to say about Smith:

"Her ability to pick her spots to score or distribute does not go unnoticed by her teammates. Smith does a good job of keeping them involved throughout the course of the game.

That's not the easiest task for a point guard who scores the basketball the way that Smith does. She has legitimate shooting range out past the 25-foot mark."

As a junior, the 5-foot-6 point guard put up 31.5 points and 6.9 assists per game while guiding Ontario Christian to a 34-2 record. That run ended with a 56-49 win over Archbishop Mitty in the CIF Open Division state championship, where Smith scored 24 points.

UCLA’s pitch may get an extra boost from the fact that her Oct. 30 visit comes on a football weekend. The Bruins host Nevada at the Rose Bowl on Oct.

  1. The women’s basketball non-conference schedule for 2026-27 still hasn’t been released.

Smith will see USC a week before UCLA, then UConn a week after that. Two of her former Ontario Christian teammates, Tatiana Griffin and Sydney Douglas, also have UCLA offers; Griffin is now at Mater Dei, while Douglas is at Corona Centennial.

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