Reed Sheppard has his Kentucky teammates buzzing. Why? ‘It might be surprising to y’all.’
The storybook tale of Reed Sheppard arrived at one of its most important chapters Monday night.
And the young Kentucky Wildcat couldn’t have scripted it much better.
Sheppard made his long-awaited debut in the season opener against New Mexico State, the son of two UK basketball greats finally stepping onto the Rupp Arena floor for the first time in a game that mattered. His first college points won’t soon be forgotten.
With about six minutes left in the first half, Sheppard streaked toward the basket on a fast break, cradled the ball in his right hand and then leaped into the air before throwing down a two-handed jam — in a dunking motion much like his father’s — his face erupting in excitement before his feet even touched the ground.
He wasn’t the only one celebrating. The crowd, of course, went nuts.
“That was awesome,” Sheppard said of the play after UK’s 86-46 victory.
While the image of the freshman guard slamming home his first college points will be the one that sticks with fans well into the future, it was something else in the sequence that had John Calipari heaping postgame praise on the teenager.
“Reed may have the best hands of anybody I’ve coached,” said the Hall of Famer with more than two dozen players currently on NBA rosters. “He was really good today.”
Sheppard’s 3-point shooting ability has been well publicized. His basketball smarts are evident and to be expected as the son of 1998 Final Four MVP Jeff Sheppard and former UK women’s star Stacey Reed Sheppard. His team-first approach has been advertised throughout his young career.
But he takes pride in his defense, and he showed it off during his college debut.
That memorable dunk wouldn’t have been possible without effort on the other end. The play that ended in a roar from the Rupp crowd began with Sheppard pressuring New Mexico State guard Jordan Rawls about 45 feet from the rim. When Rawls tried to go to his right around a screen, Sheppard deftly reached around him and back-tapped the ball out of his hand. UK teammate D.J. Wagner lunged for the loose ball, saved it from going out of bounds with a quick pass to a streaking Sheppard, and the rest is UK basketball history.
“That’s how he’s been playing the whole time we’ve been here,” Wagner said of Sheppard’s defense. “Just playing aggressive, disrupting, getting all type of steals. So it wasn’t really surprising to us. It might be surprising to y’all, but that’s what we see every day.”
Kentucky had 13 steals Monday night. That’s the most in a season opener in 20 years. Sheppard had two of those steals. On the Cats’ four-game GLOBL JAM trip to Canada over the summer, he tied for a team lead with seven steals.
All night long, Sheppard — along with Wagner and fellow freshman Rob Dillingham — pressured the ball relentlessly. When a New Mexico State player had it, the young Wildcats were trying to get it. Or force the Aggies into a bad pass or untenable dribble move.
And the constant pressure often led to New Mexico State miscues, which in turn led to easy UK buckets.
“It’s pretty cool,” Sheppard said of Calipari’s “best hands of anybody I’ve coached” remark. “Being able to pressure the ball comes from trust from my teammates. I know my teammates are going to be behind me in the right spot, so if something happens — and they get by me — I can trust them to make the right play and make the right decision and then be able to scram out of it and just get back to five-on-five.”
The collective quickness of UK’s guards often leads to frustration in practices.
Sheppard said it can be humbling — on both sides of the ball — going up against guys like Wagner, Dillingham and others. Trying to defend those players — as well as offensively proficient teammates like Antonio Reeves and Justin Edwards — isn’t easy. And it can be just as difficult for the guy with the ball in his hands.
The logical result: everybody improves.
“That’s the good thing about being at Kentucky. I get to guard Robert and D.J., Antonio, Justin — whoever it is in practice — every single day,” Sheppard said. “And sometimes it’s not fun at all, because they’re all really, really good players. And you just get better. Every day, you compete. So being able to do that against them in practice — it’s a really good benefit about being at Kentucky. You get to go against the best players in the world every day.”
Dillingham — the shiftiest of UK’s players — described Sheppard’s quick hands and said that, sometimes, practice ends and he simply has to go back to the dorm knowing he got beat that day. Wagner has come to know that feeling, too.
“It just makes you a lot more sharp — knowing you gotta make the right pass or knowing that you can’t turn your head, even for a little bit,” he said. “Because he’s gonna take it from you. I feel like it makes all of us a lot better.”
And Sheppard’s defensive quickness doesn’t solely manifest itself in steals.
The 6-foot-3 guard uses that ability to block shots, too. He had two of UK’s three blocks Monday night. At the GLOBL JAM, he had five blocks in four games, second-most on the team behind starting center Tre Mitchell with six.
On the New Mexico State possession immediately before Sheppard’s steal-and-slam sequence, he blocked a shot, grabbed the ball out of the air and — before landing on the baseline — spiked it off an Aggies player and out of bounds.
“I honestly have no idea how I block shots like I do,” he conceded with a grin. “I’ve kind of always just been able to do that. But I do take pride in being able to do it.”
When that aspect of Sheppard’s defensive arsenal was brought up to Wagner, a big smile appeared on the five-star freshman’s face.
“Everything you saw today, that’s what he does in practice,” he said. “… Now you all are seeing it. Y’all are seeing how much of a threat he is defensively, how great of a player he is defensively.”
Game one couldn’t have gone much better for Sheppard, who finished with 12 points, five rebounds and two assists in nearly 21 minutes off the bench. And that defensive play he made that led to his first points? It happened directly in front of his parents, who were watching from their seats near midcourt and wearing blue shirts with their son’s name and number on the back.
“It’s really, really cool,” Sheppard said of the experience. “It was a dream of mine since I’ve been a little boy. Always been a Kentucky fan. Always will be. So finally being able to be here and go out and play and perform to the best that I can — and just having fun with my teammates — it’s just really, really fun.”
Friday
Texas A&M-Commerce at No. 16 Kentucky
When: 7 p.m.
TV: SEC Network+
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Texas A&M Commerce 0-2, Kentucky 1-0
Series: First meeting
This story was originally published November 9, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
