Sad news: Mark Pope’s first Kentucky recruit hasn’t played basketball in two years.

Whoever ends up playing basketball for the University of Kentucky next season and however the Mark Pope era turns out, one thing is for certain. History will show that the very first player to fully commit to this new chapter of UK basketball will be Collin Chandler. And he’s coming to Lexington under a unique set of circumstances. Chandler is in the final stage of a two-year mission trip for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he’s scheduled to arrive home in the United States in less than two weeks.

A top 40 national prospect in the 2022 class, Chandler signed with BYU before his senior season of high school and opted to serve a two-year mission before enrolling in the school. Obviously, a lot has changed around BYU basketball since his departure. Pope left Provo to become UK’s new coach on April 12, and Chandler — a Farmington, Utah, native — flipped his two-and-a-half-year commitment from the Cougars to the Cats four days later. In doing so, he officially became Kentucky’s first confirmed player for the opening season of the Pope era. No one questions Chandler’s talent. He was the No. 33 overall recruit in the 2022 class, according to the 247Sports rankings, and would have been a deserving McDonald’s All-American selection that year. But his readiness to jump into the expectations of Kentucky basketball is a bit of a mystery, with two years passed since he last played a competitive game.

Lynn Lloyd is the co-director of the Utah Prospects — the state’s premier grassroots basketball team — and coached Chandler on the Adidas circuit. He’s seen plenty of players go through the process that Chandler is about to navigate, stepping into college sports after two years away. “Some people say it ruins a kid for basketball. Some say it doesn’t. I mean, it’s just all based on the kid. There’s always individual results,” Lloyd told the Herald-Leader. “All the football guys say it gives them an advantage. But some of the kids come home and don’t have the fire after they’ve gone. They usually grow — very much so — emotionally. The kids come home very mature, because they’ve been on their own for two years, and they’ve basically been serving others. And preaching of Jesus Christ and the invitation to do that. “So the kids come home very mature. But Collin was always very mature. So I don’t see that part of him changing. He’s always been really mature, black and white, knows right from wrong, raised by a great family.”