A former Kentucky basketball player will play for Rick Pitino at St. John’s next season
Bryce Hopkins started his college basketball career with John Calipari.
The former Kentucky player is going to end it with Rick Pitino.
Hopkins, who played the past three seasons at Providence, jumped in the NCAA transfer portal last week and committed to St. John’s on Monday.
The 6-foot-7 forward from the Chicago area was a freshman at Kentucky for the 2021-22 season. He showed promise in early practices for the Wildcats but never broke into Calipari’s rotation, which included upperclassmen such as Oscar Tshiebwe, Keion Brooks and Jacob Toppin in the frontcourt.
Hopkins averaged 2.1 points and 1.4 rebounds in just 6.4 minutes per game for the Wildcats after coming to Lexington as the No. 39 overall recruit in the 2021 composite rankings. He didn’t play in UK’s overtime loss to 15-seeded Saint Peter’s in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, then transferred to Providence for his sophomore year, emerging as a star immediately.
In his first season with the Friars, he averaged 15.8 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 34.9 minutes — starting all 33 games that season for coach Ed Cooley. Hopkins was a first-team All-Big East selection in his first year in the league.
Providence made the 2023 NCAA Tournament but was defeated by Kentucky in the first round. Cooley accepted the head coaching job at Georgetown that offseason, though Hopkins — projected as a possible NBA draft pick — decided to return to Providence and play for Cooley’s replacement, Kim English.
Hopkins, who earned preseason All-America honors, averaged 15.5 points and 8.6 rebounds per game as a junior, but that season was limited to just 14 games after he suffered a torn ACL in January. The injury forced him to miss the start of the 2024-25 season, and he suffered a bone bruise in December after playing in just three games. He averaged 17.0 points, 7.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game, shooting 40.0% from 3-point range, over those games.
English announced in January that Hopkins would not return this season, preserving one more year of college eligibility.
His addition could be a big one for Pitino, who led St. John’s to its first outright Big East regular-season championship since 1985 in just his second season as head coach. The Red Storm then won their first Big East Tournament title in 25 years and earned a 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, where they managed their first victory in March Madness since 2000 before being upset by Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks in the round of 32.
Pitino is expected to lose leading scorer RJ Luis Jr. — the Big East’s player of the year — to the transfer portal, but he’s already landed former Arizona State guard Joson Sanon, one of the top-ranked players in the portal, for next season. St. John’s will also retain forward Zuby Ejiofor, the team’s second-leading scorer and top rebounder and rim-protector from this past season.
St. John’s hosted Hopkins for an on-campus visit over the weekend, and the Red Storm are also expected to be in the mix for other high-profile transfers in this cycle.
Next season will mark the 30th anniversary of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team, which featured Pitino as the head coach and current UK head coach Mark Pope as one of the captains. Pitino and Pope have talked about the possibility of a game between the Cats and Red Storm in Rupp Arena to commemorate the anniversary, and Pope said recently that such a matchup was still a possibility for the 2025-26 schedule.
