College basketball star Hunter Dickinson makes NCAA transfer portal decision. It’s not UK.
The Hunter Dickinson saga has finally reached its conclusion.
The winner? Not the Kentucky Wildcats.
On Thursday morning, Dickinson committed to the Kansas Jayhawks as the top men’s college basketball player in the NCAA transfer portal.
Dickinson made the announcement in a video posted on social media.
Dickinson was previously a three-year star at Michigan who played in 94 games for the Wolverines and was a reliable post presence with per-game averages of 17.2 points and 8.4 rebounds across his three seasons in Ann Arbor.
A career 36% three-point shooter, Dickinson also averaged 1.6 assists and blocks each per game at Michigan.
The 7-foot-1, left-handed Dickinson eventually narrowed his large pool of potential suitors to four schools: Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland and Villanova.
He took recruiting visits to all four schools, and teased his potential college choice on various media platforms for weeks. But the former four-star recruit ultimately picked head coach Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks as his next playing stop.
This failure to land Dickinson via the transfer portal is a significant blow for head coach John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats.
Dickinson had been prioritized by Calipari, and was one of only a handful of players to receive significant recruiting interest from UK out of the transfer portal.
It also means plenty of questions still remain about Kentucky’s frontcourt for next season.
Right now, the frontcourt figures to be filled by incoming five-star center Aaron Bradshaw (although Bradshaw expects to play the “four” at UK next season) and second-year big man Ugonna Onyenso (who had his own transfer portal stint this offseason).
Senior Lance Ware entered the NCAA transfer portal Thursday morning, although in a tweet, Calipari said Ware is “welcome to return if he doesn’t find the opportunity he’s looking for.”
Bradshaw boasts one of the highest ceilings of any member of Kentucky’s star-studded 2023 recruiting class. He finished the 2023 Rivals recruit rankings as the No. 2 player in the country and expanded his offensive game as a senior at Camden (N.J.) High School to include jumpers from outside of the paint and three-point shots.
Embracing physicality and routinely being able to win battles around the rim are the progressions Bradshaw must make early in his college career, but he adds immediate range and size to the Wildcats with his 7-foot-1 frame.
Onyenso showed significant promise during an earlier-than-scheduled freshman season after he reclassified to the 2022 recruiting class. While Onyenso appeared in 16 games for the Wildcats as a freshman, most came against lesser, non-conference opposition: Onyenso played in just one game over the final eight weeks of the season, and will still be a work-in-progress as a sophomore.
The stay-or-go status for Kentucky star Oscar Tshiebwe still remains unclear, as Tshiebwe mulls the start of his professional career after two highly productive seasons at UK, although those campaigns both lacked vindicating team success in the NCAA Tournament.
Tshiebwe has entered his name in the NBA Draft while keeping open the possibility to return to college. He has until 11:59 p.m. on May 31 to pull out of the draft.
The NBA Combine is not scheduled to end until May 21.
In addition to Kentucky’s five-player 2023 recruiting class — which is the top-ranked recruiting class in the country — the Wildcats have yet to bring in any transfer this offseason from the portal.
Players currently known to be departing UK from last season’s team are: Jacob Toppin (NBA Draft), CJ Fredrick (transfer to Cincinnati), Sahvir Wheeler (transfer to Washington), Daimion Collins (NCAA transfer portal), Cason Wallace (NBA Draft) and Ware (NCAA transfer portal).
The stay-or-go status for three Kentucky players — Antonio Reeves, Chris Livingston and Tshiebwe — remains unclear.
The deadline for any additional player movement out of the Kentucky program is upcoming as well.
The deadline to enter the NCAA transfer portal is May 11.
The first look we will get at the 2023-24 Kentucky Wildcats will come in July, when UK takes part in the “GLOBL JAM” in Toronto, a four-team event featuring squads from the United States, Canada, Germany and Africa.
Kentucky will represent the USA, and has games scheduled against under-23 teams from Germany (July 12), Canada (July 13) and Africa (July 15).
The gold-medal and consolation games will be played July 16.
This story was originally published May 4, 2023 at 10:33 AM.
