Antonio Reeves is returning to Kentucky. It’s a ‘crucial’ development for UK’s roster.
It took a little longer than expected, but Antonio Reeves has made a final decision on his future.
He plans to remain at Kentucky for the 2023-24 season.
The 6-foot-5 guard from Chicago entered his name in the NBA Draft following the 2022-23 season, and it was expected at the time that he would ultimately decide to either begin his professional career or come back to Lexington for his final year of NCAA eligibility.
Reeves, the Cats’ top backcourt scorer last season, did remove his name from the draft pool on May 31 — the deadline for college players to pull out and retain their eligibility — but he did not immediately commit to a return to Kentucky.
After exploring the possibility of a transfer and meeting with UK Coach John Calipari to discuss his future, Reeves will indeed be back with the Wildcats. 247Sports national analyst Travis Branham reported Wednesday morning that Reeves had moved back into his dorm room in Lexington the previous day and is expected to play for the Cats next season. The Herald-Leader confirmed later Wednesday morning that Reeves is back on campus and enrolled in summer classes at UK.
It’s a welcome return for the program, which has lost eight scholarship players with remaining eligibility from the 2022-23 roster, leaving Calipari with only two returnees — little-used sophomores Adou Thiero and Ugonna Onyenso — until Reeves’ decision to join the team for another run.
“It’s extremely important, just in terms of having a returning starter that played under Cal,” Branham told the Herald-Leader. “He made tremendous strides last season. He bought into what Cal was feeding him last year. So to have a voice like that in the locker room, where he’s able to tell these freshmen, ‘Hey, if you listen to Cal, and you buy in to what he’s telling you, good things can happen.’ And he’s proof of it.”
Reeves got off to an uneven start over the first several weeks of the 2022-23 season — struggling mightily against some of the Wildcats’ top early competition — before finding his footing down the stretch and emerging as Kentucky’s top scoring option on the perimeter.
Ultimately, he averaged 14.4 points per game and shot 39.8 percent from three-point range in his first season with Kentucky following a transfer from Illinois State, where he played the first three years of his college basketball career. Reeves led the team in three-point percentage and his 80 makes from long range were tops on UK’s roster, by a wide margin. Freshman guard Cason Wallace was next with 44 threes, and fellow senior CJ Fredrick (34 makes) was the only other Kentucky player with more than 18 made three-pointers.
That type of shooting ability will be important for a team projected to be heavily reliant on freshmen. Reeves is also the only upperclassman scholarship player on Calipari’s current roster for next season. As it stands, his teammates consist of the two returning sophomores — Onyenso and Thiero — and seven freshmen, with at least one more addition possibly coming later this offseason.
Reeves’ signature performance over his first year at UK came in the regular-season finale at Arkansas, where he scored 37 points and led a Wildcats’ team with zero healthy point guards to an upset victory over the Razorbacks.
“There was a lot of talk around NBA circles about him as an NBA prospect, and halfway through the year — the first half of the season — he was a wild roller-coaster ride,” Branham said. “He was a player that, frankly, was tough to win with. But by the end of the year he made so much improvement and was so much more efficient.
“So to have a returning starter who played under Cal and knows how Cal coaches, can take freshmen under his wing … because Adou and Ugonna, they had very limited roles. They weren’t receiving the similar type of coaching, day in and day out, as a guy like Antonio Reeves was. So to get him back is crucial, to say the least.”
Reeves went 1-for-15 from the field (and 1-for-10 from three-point range) in Kentucky’s season-ending loss to Kansas State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, but that sour conclusion was more of an outlier in an otherwise strong final few weeks for the veteran guard, who provided an even-keeled presence for an up-and-down team.
UK does have the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class coming in, led by projected lottery picks DJ Wagner and Justin Edwards, and Calipari will likely look to Reeves to help those college basketball newcomers along.
Reeves, who turns 23 in November, has one season of eligibility remaining, thanks to the NCAA granting an extra year to all athletes who played during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 campaign. He was not projected as an NBA pick at any point this past season, but his shooting ability and versatile scoring package could make him an intriguing option for pro teams, if he can improve on the defensive end and continue to refine his offensive game.
“(Defense) and his decision making,” Branham said of areas where Reeves can get better this season. “That was part of the reason for his wild roller-coaster ride in the first part of the season. Shot selection and all that stuff was just so erratic at times that it really kind of scares people, but if he buys into being a more effective defender, more consistent on that end, more reliable — and he proves to be more efficient, like he was in the second half of the season — then, yeah, he’s going to continue to get those NBA looks.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2023 at 11:24 AM.
