Of the nine new transfer additions Mark Pope brought in for his first Kentucky basketball team, one player stands above the rest when it comes to on-court projections for the 2024-25 season.
It’s not Koby Brea, the 3-point shooting dynamo who made 49.8% of his attempts from deep last season at Dayton.
And it’s neither Brandon Garrison (a 2023 McDonald’s All-American who averaged nearly two blocks per game at Oklahoma State as a freshman last season), nor is it Kerr Kriisa, the enigmatic former guard at Arizona and West Virginia.
The incoming Kentucky Wildcat with the highest on-court expectations — according to Evan Miyakawa, one of college basketball’s preeminent statisticians — is Andrew Carr, the 6-foot-11, 227-pound forward who previously spent two seasons each at Delaware and Wake Forest.
The key statistic that Miyakawa uses on his website, EvanMiya.com, to measure the value of a college basketball player is Bayesian Performance Rating (BPR).
Per Miyakawa’s site, BPR is defined as “the ultimate measure of a player’s overall value to his team when he is on the floor.”
This rating goes far beyond the box score statistics that a player accrues over the course of a game. Everything from per-possession individual stats to the quality of each individual opponent, as well as the quality of each individual teammate, is accounted for when Miyakawa generates a player’s BPR.
(This was the statistic that Reed Sheppard famously excelled in during his lone season at UK).
The final BPR number produced is equal to the number of points per 100 possessions better than the opponent a player’s team is expected to be if the player were on the court with nine other average players.
Among all of Kentucky’s transfer newcomers for next season, nobody has a higher projected BPR for the 2024-25 season than Carr, who averaged 13.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game last season at Wake Forest (all of which were career highs).
Carr’s projected BPR for next season is 4.98, which ranks 36th among more than 1,900 college basketball transfers from the offseason, according to Miyakawa.
“I think the thing that I like about Andrew Carr is that he’s very strong in almost every category that you’re looking at,” Miyakawa told the Herald-Leader. “For a guy who’s going to provide some some length and height on the interior. He’s almost 7 feet tall. But he can stretch the floor, he shot 37% from deep (last season), and he’s also super efficient at the rim as well.”
It’s Carr’s reliable, across-the-board production that has him rated so highly in Miyakawa’s metrics, just ahead of former Oklahoma guard Otega Oweh (a BPR of 4.76) and the aforementioned Kriisa (a BPR of 4.55).
Carr — who has made 112 career starts and has played in 117 career college basketball games — has averaged at least 10 points and five rebounds per game in each of the last three seasons.
“I don’t necessarily think you’re expecting Carr to be your leading scorer, but he’s always going to be a threat offensively because he can score, he can rebound,” Miyakawa added.
Carr’s true shooting percentage (62.5%) and offensive rating (124.1) last season were both top-100 marks in the nation, per KenPom, another widely cited college basketball analytics service.
If all goes well, those figures will rise this season with Carr playing a key role in an offense that’s expected to be heavy on 3-pointers and played at a fast pace.
“Not many coaches are telling you, ‘If you don’t shoot the ball, you’re going to sit next to me,’” Carr said this month.
Carr also brings value on defense: He led Wake Forest with 52 blocks last season, the fifth-most among all ACC players.
While the Demon Deacons fell short of reaching the NCAA Tournament (Wake Forest was a 1 seed in the NIT), Carr’s on-court impact was clearly felt for a team that racked up 21 wins and went 17-2 in home contests.
“Wake Forest last year performed way better when he was on the court. ... I think they were outscoring opponents by 11 more points per 100 possessions when (Carr) was on the floor versus on the bench, which is a very good mark,” Miyakawa explained.
“So it’s not just his individual numbers. The more advanced metrics that look at just how you’re impacting team performance, he evaluates really well there.”
Durability has been another strong suit for Carr: He started all 68 games that Wake Forest played over the last two seasons.
Carr said his former coach at Wake Forest, Steve Forbes, afforded him a similar level of offensive freedom last season as he will have this season at UK.
“Big emphasis on spacing. ... A good motion offense,” Carr said of his offensive experience last season at Wake Forest. “It’s a little bit different on the emphasis on 3s, and the other part would be, Coach Forbes was more focused on pick-and-roll, and Coach Pope does a good job of, in transition we have a couple different sets that we automatically get into: Off-ball screens and cuts and things like that.”
New Kentucky forward Andrew Carr averaged 13.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game last season at Wake Forest. These were all career-high totals for Carr, who is about to begin his fifth college basketball season. Rob Kinnan USA TODAY NETWORK
Andrew Carr stands out as transfer addition for Kentucky basketball
When Pope sat down for a press conference with media members this summer (his first press conference since that raucous introductory event in April inside Rupp Arena), Carr was one of the players singled out by Kentucky’s new head coach after the opening week of summer practice.
Pope praised Carr — along with another veteran player in former San Diego State guard Lamont Butler — as a veteran college basketball player who can still find ways to improve and refine his game.
“A lot of us are learning a lot of new things from Coach Pope,” Carr said. “Different terminology, how to play and everything like that. So, it’s been really important for us to try and spend as much time together on the court as well and figure some things out.”
For Carr, this will be his third and final college stop, as well as the biggest stage he’s played on.
He won the 2022 Colonial Athletic Association (now called the Coastal Athletic Association) Tournament with Delaware and played in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, before spending the last two seasons in a high-major league with Wake Forest.
But the spotlight of Kentucky is a different beast, as are the expectations for Pope’s first UK squad, which features the sixth-best transfer class in the country, per Miyakawa.
“I think it’s been very smooth for me,” Carr said of his transition to UK as a fifth-year player. “(It’s) something I was kind of used to, already transferring one time and even last year (at Wake Forest) having a lot of new players. For me, I’m kind of used to the turnover within a team and figuring out how to jell quickly.”
Another reason to think Carr’s move to Lexington could work out well for all parties, and perhaps as good as Miyakawa projects?
The versatility Carr has displayed as a “prototypical college and NBA power forward,” as Pope described him when Carr signed with the Cats.
“(He’s a) guy who’s going to be able to guard any of the big guys who you’re going to play against, but also is going to not force your offense to be one dimensional,” Miyakawa said of Carr. “... I think you could ask him to be a primary scorer or you could ask him to play off the ball and be more of a second or third piece. I think he can do all of it. So, I don’t really see a lot of weaknesses with his game.”
Andrew Carr goes in for a dunk during one of Kentucky’s early practices this summer. Carr transferred to UK after spending the past two seasons at Wake Forest. Before that, Carr spent two seasons at Delaware. Chet White UK Athletics
Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas.Support my work with a digital subscription
Get one year of unlimited digital access for $159.99
