Western Kentucky men’s basketball coach Hank Plona announced the signing of Kentucky natives Armelo Boone and Lawson Rice on Wednesday.

The pair of signees are current standouts in Kentucky high school basketball, helping their teams to appearances in the KHSAA Sweet 16 state tournament and garnering numerous individual accolades throughout their high school careers.

“We are very excited about adding Armelo and Lawson to our WKU basketball family,” Plona said in a news release. “They are both winning players from great families who are about everything that has made us successful here at WKU. Kids from Kentucky have always been the core of every great team at WKU, and we know that Armelo and Lawson are going to continue that tradition.”

A 6-foot-4 guard from Woodford County High School, Boone averaged 20.8 points and 6.4 rebounds as a junior last season. Boone has posted 1,475 total points in three seasons of varsity action. As a sophomore, he led Frederick Douglass in scoring on the team’s run to the KHSAA Sweet 16 semifinals. Boone also averaged 26 points per game over three games in the prestigious King of the Bluegrass tournament in his junior season, including 29 points against Chicago De La Salle. He was a Lexington Herald Leader All-City First-Team selection in 2023 and 2024 and earned First-Team All-11th Region honors in 2024. Boone was named a 2024 Kentucky Junior All-Star, a Lexington Herald Leader and earned Louisville Courier Journal All-State Honorable Mention.

“Armelo is an upbeat young man that brings positive energy and excitement to every day,” Plona said. “He has a passion for life and for basketball that makes any team better. He is strong, talented, smart and is just scratching the surface of who we expect him to be as a player. He is going to continue to build his confidence to be elite, and as he does, he has a chance to be very, very special. Hilltopper fans are going to love watching him and the excitement that he brings to Diddle Arena every single night.”

Rice, a 6-foot-6 guard from Butler County High School in Morgantown, averaged 18 points and 10.7 rebounds per outing last season while shooting 61% from the field and 41% from the arc. He has charted 1,533 totals points and 892 total rebounds through four seasons of varsity action. As a junior, Rice helped lead Butler County to its first ever Region 3 championship and KHSAA Sweet 16 appearance. As a junior, Rice averaged 19 points per game over three games in the prestigious King of the Bluegrass tournament. He was named First-Team All-3rd Region.

“We believe that we got a great one in Lawson,” Plona said. “Lawson is versatile and can play and guard almost any position on the floor. His improvement over the past few years has been very impressive and we know he will continue to get better year by year. Lawson will impact winning from day one. He is a competitor in every sense of the word and is willing to do anything to help a team win. We are very excited about his future and his decision to be a Hilltopper.”