High-ranked 2026 guard Kinney sets commitment date

Men’s Basketball

Overtime Elite

Taylen Kinney dribbles at the Overtime Elite combine on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Atlanta.

Taylen Kinney, a high-ranked point guard from Newport, Kentucky, who is a target for Kansas in the class of 2026, will announce his college commitment on Sept. 28, according to a post on his Instagram account.

Recently measured at 6-foot-3 and 188 pounds, Kinney averaged 20.1 points, 5.0 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 2.3 steals while playing for RWE in the Overtime Elite league last season — the same competition from which KU has recently recruited players like Samis Calderon, Bryson Tiller and Kohl Rosario. He is the No. 1 point guard and No. 13 overall prospect according to 247Sports, which classifies him as a five-star recruit, and No. 2 and No. 17 in its composite rankings.

Kinney narrowed his recruitment to eight schools — Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Miami, Louisville, Oregon and Texas — in late August before reportedly canceling his visits to Miami and Texas. He came to Lawrence the weekend of Aug. 22 and still has another pending visit to see the Razorbacks ahead of his decision date.

Kinney told On3’s Joe Tipton that he was “blown away” by his visit to KU.

“(Bill Self) just wants me to come be that guy next year,” he told Tipton. “Just like how DP (Darryn Peterson) is going to be that guy next year. He wants me to step into DP’s place. It’s a great program. It’s a legendary program, you know. Always wins, it speaks for itself. I mean, 14 years in a row, they won the Big 12 Championship. He gets to the March Madness every year, and he’s winning games there.”

The guard took part in OTE’s Pro Day on Thursday in Atlanta, at which Self was in attendance. Kinney posted a vertical jump of 27.0 inches and recorded times of 3.343 seconds in the three-quarter-court sprint, 12.745 seconds in the lane agility drill and 3.146 seconds in the reactive shuttle. He made 80% of his shots in the star drill and matched the highest mark of any player with an 86.7% pull-up field-goal percentage; he also hit 76% of his 3-point attempts.

In game action at the combine, he scored two points with three assists, a steal and a turnover in six minutes of one matchup, then had five points, two steals and an assist in less than four minutes in the other.

Adam Finkelstein, 247Sports’ director of scouting, described Kinney in July as follows: “Kinney is a scoring and playmaking lead guard who is smooth and versatile with his attack. He’s a multi-level scoring threat with a creative and crisp handle to get to his advanced pull-up game or pressure the rim. He can rise-up to finish when he has momentum, and also owns dexterity and touch as a lay-up maker.”

The Jayhawks are looking to secure their first commitment in the class of 2026. By the time their class of 2025 was done, they ended up bringing in six freshmen in Calderon, Rosario and Tiller as well as Corbin Allen, Paul Mbiya and Darryn Peterson.

Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off “California vibes,” whatever that means.

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