Fair or not, this will be a major sign of how Calipari’s make-or-break offseason is going
John Calipari is returning as Kentucky’s head coach next season.
That decision has ruffled the feathers — to put it mildly — of a vocal segment of the UK basketball fan base that feels a fresh start is in order for the Wildcats’ program. It would make Calipari’s job a whole lot easier if he could go into his 16th season on the Kentucky bench with some familiar faces in uniform next to him.
Rob Dillingham will enter the NBA draft soon. Reed Sheppard is projected as a top-10 pick, and — even with those deep Kentucky ties — no one can fault him if he keeps his name in the draft this year. Justin Edwards, who’s still a possible first-round pick, is likely to be a one-and-done player. Fellow freshman D.J. Wagner is viewed by some analysts as a second-round pick, and his decision will be closely monitored.
What happens with three other Kentucky players could tell the tale of Calipari’s offseason. How their immediate futures go — fair or not — will certainly be used as a barometer to judge the direction of UK’s program and a measuring stick for what’s still possible in the Calipari era.
Aaron Bradshaw, Zvonimir Ivisic and Ugonna Onyenso — the Wildcats’ trio of 7-footers — were all, at various points over the past few months, regarded as possible first-round picks in this year’s NBA draft. That’s no longer the case for any of those three players.
NBA mock drafts from ESPN, The Athletic and The Ringer have all been updated since last week. ESPN has Onyenso at No. 45 overall — the middle of the second round — on its list. Bradshaw and Ivisic are absent from those rankings. And none of Kentucky’s three 7-footers is listed at all on either of the other mock drafts.
That hasn’t kept players in Lexington in the past. Calipari’s time here is filled with instances of young Wildcats jumping ship and wading into uncertain NBA draft waters. This time around, Calipari needs continuity more than ever.
The statistics are clear: the highest-seeded teams in the NCAA Tournament — and UK has not earned a 1 seed in nine years — almost always have a few experienced holdovers from previous seasons. And those teams are overwhelmingly more likely to make it to the Final Four and win a national championship — things Calipari hasn’t done since 2015 and 2012, respectively — than lesser-seeded teams.
UK will have plenty of talented freshmen and probably a couple or so transfers next season, but it’ll need some returnees, as well. Calipari basically said this week that he wants as many of his current Cats as possible to return. Getting one of these three to stay put would be a start.
And, in all three cases, there are millions of reasons to stick around for another season.
While neither Bradshaw, Ivisic nor Onyenso are projected as first-rounders — a range that comes with guaranteed seven-figure contracts — all have possible lottery-pick potential. Every one of these players missed months of crucial developmental time during the offseason, preseason and early weeks of the season itself — setting them way back once they were actually able to get on the court. The door, for now, is also wide open for any of these three to carve out major minutes on next season’s team.
Kentucky’s 2024 recruiting class features two players classified as centers.
One is Jayden Quaintance, the top-rated prospect in the six-player group. Quaintance is big — 6-9 and 230 pounds — but he’s also still 16 years old and will almost certainly lack the physicality to play the 5 against the types of teams UK sees each season. (He’s also versatile for his size, probably making him more suited for the 4 spot anyway.)
The other is Somto Cyril, who’s even bigger — at 6-10 and 252 pounds — but lacks refinement in his game, to the point that it’s unclear how much he’ll even play as a freshman.
If either Bradshaw, Ivisic or Onyenso were to return to Kentucky and go through an entire offseason of development, plus preseason work, plus the actual season that follows, it shouldn’t be a surprise if any of those players ended up in the first round of the 2025 draft.
The nature of the Kentucky basketball program under Calipari is that pretty much everyone is expected to leave at the end of every season. This offseason is a golden opportunity for Calipari to reverse that trend, at least somewhat. And these three cases, in particular, will be worth watching closely.
Because if Bradshaw, Ivisic and Onyenso all bolt — when all have a realistic opportunity to bolster their NBA draft stock in a major way — then what will that say about Calipari and his program moving forward?
Ugonna Onyenso
Onyenso — the only sophomore of the 7-footer trio — spoke to the Herald-Leader at length on the day before Kentucky’s loss to Oakland in the NCAA Tournament last week.
“This year for me has been pretty interesting,” he said in UK’s locker room last Wednesday. “I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my game. Still figuring myself out. Still figuring out how to help the team in any way I can. You know, play with confidence. The difference between this year and last year is I’m playing a lot this year now. … Hopefully I’m going to have my breakthrough in this tournament. I just want to do what I do best — try and help my team win. That’s it.”
Onyenso told the Herald-Leader in July — before the team left for its summer trip to Canada — that he felt he had made major strides as an offensive player to that point in the offseason, specifically crediting new assistant coach John Welch with what he saw as rapid development as a scorer.
On the eve of that summer tournament, Onyenso suffered a foot injury in a closed-door scrimmage that ultimately kept him off the court completely for more than four months. He said last week that by the time he returned to full practices — the season had already begun at this point — he felt like he needed to put offensive growth on the back-burner. The most obvious path to playing time — and helping the Wildcats win — was to concentrate on his defense. So that’s what he did.
“The injury really set me back,” Onyenso said. “Then I had to come back when the team was already playing. So I said to myself that at this point — I’m still going to work on my offense — but I really have to focus on helping the team defensively. Because that’s where I’m really comfortable at — the defensive end.”
Onyenso finished the season as UK’s starting center, averaging 2.8 blocks in 18.6 minutes per game, including a Rupp Arena-record 10 blocks in a win over Ole Miss.
“I got 11 blocks,” Onyenso said last week. “They didn’t count one. It’s OK, though.”
Whatever the numbers, we now know Onyenso can swat shots against good competition. And there’s obviously ample room to grow — and plenty of reason to think he might — as an offensive player. When he spoke about having a “breakthrough” in his game last week, he was talking about making offensive gains. If he does it in college, he could rocket up the draft boards. That’s no guarantee.
“I’m just going to keep pushing, keep working,” Onyenso said. “And I know I’m going to get my breakthrough one day. Maybe at the next level. Maybe still here in college. I don’t know. I’ve just gotta be patient. That’s all.”
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Zvonimir Ivisic
Ivisic — a 7-2 freshman from Croatia — made his stunning college basketball debut on Jan. 20 against Georgia following a monthslong ordeal that featured a UK admissions delay, an NCAA investigation into his amateur background, and a series of minor injuries and ailments that kept him out of practices while he waited on his playing status.
Big Z had his moments — four double-digit scoring games — but played little on other nights. When he was on the court, Ivisic often flashed a skill set rarely seen at any level of the sport. It’s clear he has unbelievable offensive potential — deft moves with the ball in his hands and a shooting range that stretches beyond the 3-point line — to go along with the length and instincts to be an elite rim-protector in college.
He never got the chance to show those skills for prolonged periods of time, in large part due to his delayed arrival and off-the-court struggles once he got here. Ivisic acknowledged not even knowing some of the most basic rules of American basketball — you can’t hang on the rim, how the free-throw bonus works in college, for two examples — even after he’d made his debut.
It’s fair to argue that Ivisic could be a potential lottery pick with a full offseason and preseason of preparation for an entire college season without interruption, should he opt to return.
“I learned a lot from Coach Cal and from my teammates,” he said after the Oakland loss of his brief time, so far, in Lexington. “I think — even though I didn’t play much — the time I did, I feel like I learned a lot.”
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Aaron Bradshaw
This time last year, there were few — if any — high school basketball prospects more interesting than Bradshaw, a late-developing, 7-1 center from New Jersey.
Bradshaw’s long-term outlook was bright. Smart basketball analysts who have been on the grassroots circuit for years told the Herald-Leader that no player in the 2023 class had more upside. The promise was apparent to anyone who watched him play. The blend of size, length and athleticism, along with a nice shooting touch and quick-twitch defensive instincts — the sky was the limit on Bradshaw’s potential. Maybe it wouldn’t happen in year one at Kentucky, but it would happen sometime, those who followed him closely thought of Bradshaw’s impact on the game.
Well, it didn’t happen in year one at Kentucky.
Bradshaw broke his foot shortly after the conclusion of his senior season of high school, delayed surgery on the injury until the summer, and didn’t get fully back on the court until late November. He was almost certainly the player in UK’s recruiting class that could have benefited most from a full college offseason and preseason. He got none of it. And following a major star turn in just his second career college basketball game, Bradshaw’s highlights were few, and his time on the court dwindled as the Cats played their way into March.
Still, the 7-footer displayed a positive attitude as he mostly sat on the bench toward the end of the season, and, by all accounts, he was a good teammate despite a disappointing season.
A hot prospect in November — the uncertainty around his foot injury kept him lower on some draft boards — there’s no reason why Bradshaw couldn’t work his way back into the first-round conversation a year from now, if he can stay healthy over the next several months and continue to work on his game and physicality in the lead-up to the 2024-25 season.
Bradshaw played just four minutes in UK’s loss to Oakland last week — and played double-digit minutes just once over the final five weeks of the season — yet he was crying so hard he could barely speak at times in the NCAA Tournament’s postgame locker room.
Who will return to Kentucky?
Which one of these players is most likely to return? It’s a good question. As of now, there’s no good answer. Looking at each individual situation on its own, there might be a less than 50% chance that any one of these guys comes back to Kentucky next season. That would be a bad look for Calipari and his program.
Onyenso told the Herald-Leader in an open locker room at last year’s NCAA Tournament that he would definitely return for a sophomore season at Kentucky. There was no ambiguity in his statement. Following the end of UK’s season, Onyenso’s name was placed in the transfer portal. No one involved in the situation has talked publicly about the specifics of what happened, but Onyenso did ultimately return to UK with no mention of ever being in the portal. The expectation is that there will be people in his camp — as he makes a decision on his future this offseason — that try to steer the 19-year-old away from Kentucky.
Onyenso, 19, declined an interview after UK’s loss to Oakland last Thursday night.
“I’m focused on this tournament right now,” he said when asked about his future the day before. “That’s all I’m worried about.”
Ivisic, 20, came to Kentucky with a clear plan: one season with the Wildcats, and then it would be on to the 2024 draft. But will that still be the case when there could be so much to be gained by a full year in college?
Complicating his situation is the fact that Ivisic has already declared for the NBA draft twice — and pulled his name out before the deadline both times — and cannot do so a third time and retain his college eligibility. If Ivisic puts his name in the draft — and the deadline for that decision will be April 27 — he can’t return to Kentucky next season.
He left the door open to a return after UK’s loss to Oakland.
“I like it here,” he said. “I would like to come back. But we’ll see.”
Bradshaw’s situation is also complicated. He is represented by Klutch Sports, the same agency that advised former UK player Chris Livingston, who ultimately stayed in last year’s NBA draft — where he was selected with the 58th and final pick — instead of coming back to Kentucky.
As far as 2024 draft stock goes, Bradshaw, 19, appears to have little. He’s 76th on ESPN’s top 100 list of the best available prospects for this year’s draft, well outside of second-round range.
He could still enter his name and keep it there. He could come back to Kentucky. Or he could even transfer to another school, in search of a fresh start.
If he loses all three bigs, Calipari could still get a veteran frontcourt player out of the transfer portal to help bring Cyril along and possibly play alongside Quaintance.
But if roster continuity — more specifically, keeping players in the program who actually began their college careers in the program — is a key to turning the page into a new chapter of the Calipari era, he needs to show he can get one of these 7-footers to come back.
