kentucky wildcats star player announced a devastating news
With John Calipari gone, what will Kentucky's list see like for the 2024-25 season?
With John Calipari gone, what will Kentucky’s list see like for the 2024-25 season?
LEXINGTON, Ky. — For the primary time in 15 a long time, a unused period of Kentucky ball is on the skyline.
John Calipari declared his renunciation Tuesday — and he’s anticipated to be formally reported as the unused head coach at Arkansas — and UK games chief Mitch Barnhart is presently entrusted with finding his substitution.
That look isn’t anticipated to final long, but it’ll be at slightest weeks — and likely months — until the Wildcats’ list for the 2024-25 season is finalized. Whoever Barnhart contracts to ended up the new men’s ball coach at Kentucky will nearly certainly have to be piece together the lion’s share of the following program from scratch, with most of Calipari’s star-studded enlisting course likely to see somewhere else and the prospects of the current Wildcats as of now in address some time recently his flight.
With fifth-year college players Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell on their way out of Lexington after depleting their NCAA qualification this past season, 10 current Kentucky grant players may still, actually, return to school.
Here’s a see at Kentucky’s conceivable outcomes for the 2024-25 program.
Reed Sheppard
The player who will be at the best of almost about every Kentucky fan’s intellect within the coming weeks, Reed Sheppard has been named the national first year recruit of the year by a few major organizations after a shocking star turn in his to begin with season with his home-state school. Sheppard advertised a full-throated defense of Calipari following UK’s disturbed misfortune to Oakland within the to begin with circular of the NCAA Competition final month, but his profound and self-evident ties to the Wildcats’ program cruel that the Corridor of Notoriety coach’s flight is impossible to contrarily affect the 6-foot-3 guard’s decision-making prepare with respect to a conceivable return to Lexington.
That said, it still sounds like Sheppard coming back would be a long shot. He’s right now anticipated as a lottery choose in this year’s NBA draft, a status that would ensure him millions of dollars over the following few seasons and put him a year closer to an even-more-lucrative moment contract within the association.
In case Sheppard returns, it would be nearly simply out of his adore for the UK program and his want to create a more profound run within the NCAA Competition in Year 2. But his draft stock could moreover drop amid a sophomore season in college, and — with the 2024-25 list in add up to flux — it won’t be clear for a whereas whether or not the another Wildcats’ group will be well-positioned to reasonably challenge for a Last Four in 2025.
First year recruit watch Ransack Dillingham declared for the NBA draft Tuesday evening. Dillingham is also anticipated as an NBA lottery choose, positioned by ESPN as the No. 4 generally prospect this year, the best college ball player behind as it were UConn center Donovan Clingan, who made a difference lead the Huskies to the national title Monday night. Dillingham’s choice to enter the NBA draft was the foremost self-evident of the 10 UK players with remaining qualification, and he would have put his title within the draft pool and kept it there notwithstanding of who was in charge of the Kentucky program for the 2024-25 season.
Justin Edwards
One of the only Kentucky players to already announce his plans, Justin Edwards revealed last week that he was declaring for the NBA draft. Projected as a possible first-round pick — he’s No. 30 on ESPN’s latest list of the top draft prospects — Edwards did not explicitly say whether he was leaving open the option to return to school in his announcement last week, but he’s widely expected to keep his name in the 2024 draft pool and begin his pro career next season.
D.J. Wagner
Until the weekend, there was a real possibility that D.J. Wagner would return to Kentucky for a second season. The chances of that happening are now all but gone. The overriding reason that Wagner — the son of former Memphis star Dajuan Wagner — came to UK in the first place was the presence of Calipari, who coached his father in college and remained close to the family in the more than two decades since that one-and-done season. D.J. Wagner is still just 18 years old, and — with an uncertain status for this year’s NBA draft — might have come back to school to further develop his skills during one more season of college basketball. It wouldn’t be a shock if he still followed that college path, going along with Calipari to Arkansas. It would be a shock if he ended up back in Lexington next season.
Like Wagner, sophomore forward Adou Thiero is the son of a former Calipari player. His father, Almamy Thiero, played for the coach at Memphis, too. Adou Thiero was an under-the-radar high school player from Calipari’s hometown of Pittsburgh, and the pre-existing ties gave Kentucky a leg up on the recruiting competition when Thiero hit a growth spurt and broke out toward the end of his senior year. He emerged in his second season as a key player for the Wildcats, but he was the first to make an announcement regarding his plans this offseason.
Less than 48 hours after it was confirmed that Calipari would return to UK, Thiero’s name hit the transfer portal. He later clarified that he was also entering the NBA draft while leaving open the option to return to college, specifically saying that he could be back in Lexington for a third season. Even with Calipari gone, it’s not a total stretch to imagine Thiero back at UK for the 2024-25 campaign, but it would have to be the right fit with the new coach, and dozens of schools have already reached out to the high-upside 19-year-old, so the Wildcats will have an uphill battle to get him back.
Ugonna Onyenso
Other than Thiero, the only sophomore among the 10 players on this list is Ugonna Onyenso, the 19-year-old center from Nigeria who joined UK’s program just before the start of the 2022-23 school year. Onyenso emerged as a defensive stopper for the Wildcats after playing sparingly as a freshman. Before the news of Calipari’s departure, it was presumed behind the scenes that Onyenso would be leaving Kentucky following this season, either for the transfer portal or the NBA draft, where he’s No. 46 on ESPN’s list of the best available prospects, which would put him in the middle of the second round. It would be a surprise to see him back in Lexington next season, no matter who the coach ends up being.
Zvonimir Ivisic
Zvonimir Ivisic, who captured the imagination of UK fans before he even arrived in the United States and then delivered one of the most memorable debuts in Kentucky basketball history, expressed an openness to returning to Lexington after the NCAA Tournament loss to Oakland, and he’s not widely projected as a surefire NBA draft pick this year. (No. 64 on the ESPN list.) If Calipari had stayed, the chances of an Ivisic return would have been greater. With the coach who brought him to college basketball gone, he, too, seems like a long shot to be back. Ivisic has already entered the NBA draft twice and removed his name both times, so if he applies for early entry again this offseason, he will lose the remaining three seasons of college eligibility. He has until April 27 to make that decision.
Aaron Bradshaw
Once viewed as the possible No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 recruiting class, Aaron Bradshaw got off to a late start to his freshman season due to a foot injury and ultimately ended up playing the least of UK’s trio of 7-footers down the stretch. He announced Monday that he was entering both the transfer portal and the NBA draft, and — even if he stays in college basketball — he is not expected to return to Kentucky.
Jordan Burks
A late addition to the Kentucky recruiting class of 2023, Jordan Burks flashed plenty of potential while playing out of position early in his freshman season, but when UK’s trio of 7-footers finally returned to the court, his role was diminished. He is expected to enter his name in the transfer portal and look for a fresh start, though no announcement has been made yet.
