Washington State's Jaylen Wells makes it official and says he's put his name in the portal but fully intends to go through the draft process. There's been speculation that that's who Pope and staff were going to visit today.
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Another name going around is 7 foot center Noah Boyed, a juco who just pulled out of a Baylor commitment. He's from St. Lucia so maybe we could grab us another Tim Duncan.Comment
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Kentucky gets a commitment from San Diego St. graduate Lamont Butler.Comment
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^ Butler had 13 points and 3 three-pointers in the national championship game two years ago.
Not a great three-point shooter but generally San Diego St. players are super tough on defense.Comment
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I'd forgotten, but Butler also hit the buzzer-beating shot against FAU that sent San Diego St. to the championship game.Comment
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Don't want to hate on the kid but this does nothing for my excitement. He can't shoot, doesn't pass, doesn't rebound, doesn't steal the ball....I cannot believe a player like this required the entire staff to fly out to Vegas to lock up. Insane to me.Comment
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Need players. This is desperation time.
I'd probably set my expectations on LOW for next year. Maybe super low. And then be pleasantly surprised if anything good happens.
Pope is absolutely up against it. This is unchartered waters for UK except when we were on probation and in the Cal-from-Memphis year. It will take a miracle to dig us out but the most important thing is just getting a roster together.Comment
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Ironically, I thought missing on San Diego St.'s Keshad Johnson was a pretty big deal last spring. He would've brought a lot of toughness Kentucky lacked.
Those old guys who've been around, particularly ones who've played for titles, are valuable not just on the court but in the locker room. Kentucky has desperately missed that under Cal. In the last two years we had virtually nobody who'd ever won an NCAA Tournament game.Comment
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Also interesting:
Pope's first two non-freshman signees are defensive maestros.
Interesting because at BYU those teams were heralded as offense-first...and maybe offense-only. Also interesting because of the putrid, infuriating defense Kentucky has played the last three years under Calipari.Comment
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I guess (maybe ignorantly) I just thought that with the UK name, playing time available and the NIL that there would be an abundance of players interested in UK. Maybe that will turn out to be true and we will lock down a couple of elite guys. I know it's only 4 players right now and there is a LOT left to fill, but yikes, this seems like it's not going great so far.Comment
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As far as elite, there really isn't a lot of that in the portal. You might get a Dalton Knecht and hit a home run, but most of these top guys are second and third guys on mid-major teams at best. The portal was never meant to do what he's having to do. It was meant to bolster a roster, not create one.
Best-case scenario for Pope is that he gets skilled vets who buy into his plan and he runs his system. This isn't going to be something where we just roll over people with talent like Cal was doing here in 2010. He might get to that point somewhere down the road, but you look across the portal and it's not the place to find jaw-dropping, game-changing talent. That's not who those guys are by and large.Comment
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This Butler dude isn't even ranked in the top 100 transfers.... I'm just at a loss for the desperation UK seems to be showing. I know we wanted to move away from the unknown and reliance on freshman but UK fans are giddy over possibly getting Maheny from St. Mary's who's barely a top 50 ranked transfer guy.
I guess I need a serious readjustment of my expectations.Comment
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Not sure I would pay much attention to the transfer rankings. Those things have to be chock full of sameness. What would the difference really be between the 5th rated guy on that list and the 50th rated guy? A difference of negligible degrees?
Here's a list from last year that has Dalton Knecht 20th. Ryan Nembhard 21st. Fardaws Aimaq 32nd. Butler's RayJ Dennis 34th. Syracuse's Joe Girard 39th. Gonzaga's Graham Ike, who destroyed Kentucky, 48th. All those guys would've been tremendous for Kentucky had Cal even bothered to really use the portal except for one guy.
Outside the top 2-4 guys, how would you even separate some of those players in a rankings list?
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I don't know...Butler sounds like a good get for UK
He has experience
Let's give him a chanceComment
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Another list I found had Florida's Walter Clayton Jr. at 69th. Florida's Zyon Pullin at 80th. Both those guys knifed Kentucky over and over.
The aforementioned Keshad Johnson was 82nd. I would've loved to have had him. Illinois' Marcus Domask, who was incredible and will play in the NBA, was 84th. AJ Storr at 86th.
I could go on.
In short: it'd be next to impossible to put together a useable ranking of transfers. So many of those players are essentially the same player.Comment
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