NBA stay-or-go decisions could lead Kentucky basketball recruiting down uncertain path
Though the sports world at large is on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, college basketball recruiting announcements haven’t stopped.
That could make things difficult for Kentucky’s roster-building efforts.
The Cats are almost certain to lose Tyrese Maxey, Ashton Hagans and Nick Richards this offseason. Immanuel Quickley and EJ Montgomery came into the spring as bigger question marks, and — although both players have already requested feedback through the NBA Draft evaluation process — it could be a while before final decisions are made for their futures.
That leaves UK in a bit of a bind, with other schools snatching up talented transfers while the Wildcats’ coaching staff waits to see what their current players will do. If both Quickley and Montgomery were to return, the Cats could be set with their 2020-21 roster. If one or both leaves, they’d surely need some replacements.
Montgomery’s decision will have an especially large impact on Kentucky’s roster for next season. At the time the NCAA Tournament was canceled, it was expected that Montgomery — not listed on any NBA Draft boards at the moment — would be back for a junior year. Recent rumblings have indicated that might not be the case, and Montgomery’s father told the Herald-Leader this week that his son might not need another year of college before jumping to the pros.
However, the uncertainty surrounding this year’s pre-draft process — put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic — will make it more difficult for Montgomery to impress NBA teams that didn’t see an immediate pro prospect from watching his games this season.
If he does come back, he’d have every opportunity to be the primary player in a frontcourt that would include incoming recruits Isaiah Jackson and Lance Ware — both seen as multi-year college players — as well as the expected return of Keion Brooks, a bigger wing who played some around the basket this past season.
That projected frontcourt would leave John Calipari without a Richards-type bruiser in the post, but it would be plenty talented. And, with UK’s group of guards and wings, it could give Calipari another opportunity to play a somewhat smaller — but dynamic — lineup with plenty of length and potential to speed things up in transition. So far, UK hasn’t shown any overt moves of desperation to go after a frontcourt transfer. Perhaps a junior Montgomery would be enough?
“You’d love to have like an ass-kicker, so to speak,” Rivals.com national analyst Eric Bossi told the Herald-Leader this week. “But, at the same time, I think there are a lot of teams in the country that would like to have four guys that talented. And they’re plenty big, and they’re plenty athletic. Maybe there’s not a goon-type guy in there, but I think a lot of teams would like to have that problem of wondering whether those four guys are talented enough.”
If Montgomery leaves, that would leave only Jackson and Ware — two promising power forwards just outside the five-star range — and Brooks, who seems more comfortable playing around the perimeter, as the frontcourt.
Calipari would surely want more size than that going into next season. But, where would he find it?
New UK roster projection
When the season ended, Quickley looked to be a 50/50 coin flip to return to UK for a junior season, Montgomery was expected to return, and — though the Herald-Leader was told that transfers could happen — UK was not expecting any of the other underclassmen to leave the program.
Fast forward a few weeks and the landscape looks much different. All indications are that Quickley is leaning toward leaving his name in the draft, Montgomery’s camp seems to be looking at every avenue to go pro, and Johnny Juzang has announced his intention to transfer.
The most realistic best-case scenario is that Montgomery ends up coming back to join Brooks and Dontaie Allen, who missed his entire freshman season with an injury, as UK’s returning scholarship players, to go along with a No. 1-ranked recruiting class that features six signees.
There seems to be a good chance, however, that Montgomery departs. And that would leave Kentucky with just eight scholarship players total, Brooks being the only one with any previous experience playing for Kentucky.
Even by Calipari’s standards, that would be an unprecedented amount of inexperience, with just one sophomore to go along with a redshirt freshman and six true freshmen. The UK coach has made it clear that he likes to work with a smaller rotation, but he’s also made it clear he wants 10 capable players (at the very least) for five-on-five practice situations.
There’s simply no way he’d go into a season with a roster this short, meaning UK will be adding at least one, maybe two (and possibly even more) players before next season.
The transfer dilemma
With no difference-makers remaining on UK’s radar in the 2020 recruiting class — and the Cats not currently projected to land any highly touted reclassification possibilities from the 2021 class — the transfer market appears to be the only real option for immediate roster-building.
That could be a problem, for a few reasons.
Rivals.com national analyst Eric Bossi laid out one such hang-up this week, pointing out in an interview with the Herald-Leader that it’s incredibly difficult for teams aspiring to win national championships — like Kentucky — to find true difference-makers via transfers.
This is the time of year when graduate transfers, in particular, are celebrated as plug-and-play stars at their new schools, but it rarely pans out that way. “One problem is, by the time you get them conditioned to your system and what works best for you, it’s time for them to go,” Bossi said.
The playing time those incoming transfers receive also takes court time — and opportunities for development — away from younger players on the roster, and Kentucky will have plenty such players next season.
Nearly all potential transfers fall into two categories: players who have excelled at mid-major programs and, thus, would be taking a huge step up in competition at a place like Kentucky; and players who struggled to break through for major-conference teams. There simply aren’t sure-fire stars to be found in the transfer portal, and the players that are there — in most circumstances — would be hesitant to jump to a place like Kentucky, which has so many incredibly-high-upside, younger players to battle for playing time.
247Sports released a list of the top 20 graduate transfers this week. Three of the top 10 players on that list have already committed to new schools. Others are starting to narrow their possibilities. At the time 247Sports posted its top 20 rankings, the closest thing to an available post player on the entire list — Yale forward Jordan Bruner — had already cut his list to three schools.
On Thursday, Columbia transfer Patrick Tape — a 6-10, 220-pound forward and No. 15 on the 247Sports list — decommitted from Duke, less than two weeks after saying he planned to transfer there. It’s a sign of just how topsy-turvy this transfer window could become, especially with the NCAA’s current ban on in-person recruiting, which is leading players to announce transfers to schools that they haven’t even visited.
The only player on the 247Sports list that Kentucky has been credibly linked to, so far, is UNLV guard Amauri Hardy — the older brother of top UK recruiting target Jaden Hardy — but the Herald-Leader was told recently that a Hardy transfer to UK wasn’t a likely scenario and a handful teams in Pac-12 country were better positioned.
There’s a likelihood the NCAA’s new “free transfer” rule could lead to more names in the portal in the coming months, but it’s unlikely the profile of those players will be much different from the ones currently in the grad transfer pool. (The list of junior-college possibilities is scant, as well).
Meanwhile, Kentucky’s coaches are doing their due diligence — watching film, making inquiries — into possible transfer options should Quickley and/or Montgomery leave this offseason. It might be the only way to bolster next season’s roster, but it’s a path filled with uncertainty.
“Kentucky got one of the guys who was thought to be as good a grad transfer as there has ever been with Reid Travis a couple of years ago,” Bossi said. “And it’s perfect proof of just how hard it is for a guy to come in and adjust to a new system in that last year, and at what cost to the younger players that you’re trying to develop behind him.”
