Utah basketball secures commitment from 4-star point guard

McKnight is a 5-foot-10, 180-pound point guard from Hyattsville, Maryland, who is rated a four-star recruit with a 0.9376 rating in 247 Sports’ composite rankings.

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He is ranked the No. 126 overall talent and 18th-best point guard in 247 Sports’ composite rankings, while ESPN’s SCNext 100 lists McKnight as the No. 94 overall prospect in the 2027 class.

McKnight chose the Utes over a final four that included Kansas, UNLV and Boise State.

He spent last weekend on an official visit at the University of Utah.

Per 247 Sports, McKnight is the 10th-highest rated recruit for the Utah program since recruiting services began tracking such things in the early 2000s and the second-highest rated point guard, trailing only former Olympus High star Rylan Jones (0.9474) and ahead of Delon Wright (0.9028), an NBA first-round draft pick in 2015.

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McKnight will compete this season at Iowa United Prep, an elite high school basketball and AAU program located in Des Moines, Iowa, after previously playing for Long Island Lutheran High School (Brookville, New York) and DeMatha Catholic High School (Hyattsville, Maryland).

He’ll be coached at Iowa United Prep by former guard and NBA head coach Keith Smart. Smart coached BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, the No. 1 overall NBA draft pick this summer, when he played at Utah Prep in Hurricane during his final high school season.

During his junior year at Long Island Lutheran, McKnight averaged 13.6 points, 4.1 assists and 3.4 rebounds per game while shooting 43% from the field and 36% from 3-point range, per LegitGM.com.

McKnight is the second commit for the Utes in their 2027 class, joining three-star shooting guard Pierce Thompson. Thompson, who is rated the No. 244 overall recruit in the 2027 class by 247 Sports composite, committed to the Utes last month.

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McKnight is the latest of several high-potential recruits to commit to Jensen’s program.

Utah’s 2026 recruiting class also included two three-star recruits — power forward Alec Anigbata (0.9100) and point guard Styles Clemmons (0.8937) — who rank in the top 25 of the Utes’ highest-rated recruits by 247 Sports.

Thompson is the 16th-highest rated recruit in Utah’s history per 247 Sports’ metrics, while freshman Jaxon Johnson, a former Alta High star forward who recently returned from a two-year church mission, is the school’s highest-rated recruit ever at four stars and a 0.9662 rating.

That’s an intriguing amount of talent for Jensen and his coaching staff to build around over the upcoming seasons.