These are the five players who could make this UK basketball season a truly special one
While there are no clear-cut superstars or projected lottery picks on Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball roster, the new head coach of the Wildcats has amassed plenty of talent for the 2024-25 season.
This UK team will be deep. That much is undeniable.
No one — not even the national analysts who have balked at moving the Cats too far up their preseason rankings — will dispute the amount of talented individual pieces that Pope has assembled.
His first Wildcats roster should go at least 10 deep on a normal night, but questions remain over how quickly these UK players — all teammates for the first time — will be able to jell in game situations, as well as how exactly Pope will utilize all of his weapons.
Amid the uncertainty, there are some assumptions to be made.
Jaxson Robinson — the only UK player to ever play for Pope — will get plenty of offensive looks (and score plenty of points). Koby Brea, perhaps the best 3-point shooter in college basketball, will be a constant threat from deep.
Fifth-year players Lamont Butler and Andrew Carr will be steadying forces at their positions and leaders on the court. Ansley Almonor, who has already wowed with his shooting ability in early practices, will be a good fit for Pope’s offensive approach.
Kentucky kids Travis Perry and Trent Noah will have an opportunity to break through in year one — and Perry, specifically, has impressed in early practice sessions, opening the possibility of an 11-player rotation right off the bat — but their biggest contributions will likely come later in their college careers.
Any of those players could obviously outplay expectations, but the greater intrigue lies with the other five Wildcats on the roster. They each have a bit more mystery around their games, whether that be untapped potential, a better opportunity to flourish in their new surroundings, or both.
This Kentucky team should make the NCAA Tournament, and contributions up and down the roster will be responsible for its overall success. But these five players might hold the difference between a good UK season and a truly special one.
Amari Williams
One of six fifth-year players on this roster, Amari Williams came to Lexington with an impressive defensive track record, albeit at a lower level of college basketball.
Williams — listed at 7-feet tall and 262 pounds — was a three-year starter at Drexel and the three-time Coastal Athletic Association defensive player of the year. He averaged 2.0 blocked shots per game over those past three years, but patrolling the paint in the CAA is obviously much different from defending the rim against the type of talent he’s going to see in the SEC this season.
Will that defensive prowess translate to the highest level? That’s the question surrounding Williams, who was Pope’s first transfer commitment after taking the UK job.
The early buzz has been encouraging.
Williams apparently impressed his new coaches right out of the gate during the summer practice sessions, and those who have been in the Joe Craft Center so far this preseason have raved about both his rim protection and range as a defender, regularly getting stops at the bucket and gobbling up space on that end of the court.
Everyone knows these Wildcats will bring plenty of offensive firepower. Defense is the bigger question going into the season, and if Williams can indeed rise to this new level of competition, it will go a long way toward making a more complete team. Another bonus here: Williams is an exceptional passer for a big man — a key trait for Pope’s offensive approach — and practice observers say he’s making the two-point shots he needs to make in the early going.
Brandon Garrison
Just because John Calipari isn’t around anymore doesn’t mean the streak of McDonald’s All-Americans will end. Pope got one for his first roster, too.
Brandon Garrison — a star recruit in the 2023 class — is the other transfer expected to play major minutes at the 5 this season. Listed at 6-10 and 250 pounds, he brings another big body to Pope’s squad, and his McDonald’s All-American background is a sign of his long-term upside.
Garrison has already produced at a high level. He started 29 of 32 games as a freshman at Oklahoma State last season, averaging 7.5 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.5 blocks while shooting 57.2% from the floor. Those per-game numbers don’t jump off the page — Garrison averaged 22.6 minutes — but the deeper analytics say he was one of the best young defensive players in the defensively excellent Big 12 last season.
Billed as somewhat of a project player who showed clear signs of improvement over his high school career, there’s plenty of reason to believe that Garrison will continue to make major strides moving forward. Practicing every day against Williams should certainly help, and — like his older teammate — Garrison, too, is viewed as a terrific passer for his position who will make the close-to-the-bucket shots necessary to his role in Pope’s offense.
This is a young player with legitimate NBA potential. The quicker it all comes together for him, the better it will be for this Kentucky team.
Otega Oweh
With all the hype directed toward different players on the UK roster, it almost feels as if Otega Oweh has become the forgotten Wildcat for the 2024-25 season.
He shouldn’t be.
No one else on this team can do quite what he’s capable of, and that means — if Oweh takes another step forward this season — the 6-4, 215-pound junior guard should play a unique role in Kentucky’s offense.
These Cats have a stated goal of putting up 35 3-point shots per game, and Pope has assembled the personnel to hit at a high rate. Movement off the ball — and finding cutting lanes to the basket — will be a major feature of the attack, but UK will need someone who can put it on the floor and go get a bucket, too.
Oweh could be the Wildcat best suited for that.
He averaged 11.4 points per game as a starter at Oklahoma last season, and he plays a powerful style that can make it tough for other guards to keep him from driving to the rim. Oweh, who’s also earned Pope’s praise for his physical defensive approach, said over the summer that he’s been working on improving as a scorer from all three levels. He attempted just four 3-pointers in 38 games as a freshman before shooting 37.7% (20-for-53) from deep last season, and he said he’s been hitting at as high a rate as ever since arriving in Lexington.
If that perimeter shooting keeps progressing, it’ll make him even tougher to defend and add yet another wrinkle to what should be one of the best offenses in college basketball.
Collin Chandler
What will Kentucky be getting with Collin Chandler this season?
It’s one of the most intriguing questions going into the 2024-25 campaign.
Though he wasn’t selected for the game, Chandler was a McDonald’s All-American-caliber recruit in high school, but that was more than two years ago. Rather than enroll in college right away, Chandler embarked on a two-year mission trip for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a journey that included very little access to basketball.
The 6-5 guard was technically Pope’s first UK recruit — announcing his flip from BYU less than a week after the coaching change, while still on his mission overseas — and it shouldn’t surprise anyone if he’s ultimately the most talented player on this Wildcats roster.
But there’s a long way to go before Chandler can get to that point, and asking that much of him this season might be unfair.
As he reacclimated himself to the daily basketball grind, Chandler was put on a strict ramp-up plan — something Pope did often with mission returnees as the head coach at BYU and Utah Valley — and that meant the freshman was limited in what he could do on the court, putting him behind his new teammates for most of the summer.
Expectations for players in Chandler’s position naturally need to be tempered, but teammate Jaxson Robinson — the leading scorer at BYU last season and an observer of this ramp-up period during his time there — told the Herald-Leader over the summer that he’d never seen anyone adapt to the process as well or as swiftly as Chandler, who was set to be one of the Cougars’ most touted recruits ever when he was still committed there.
When he was in high school, Chandler had one-and-done potential. It’s going to take time for him to get back into game shape and completely find his footing on the floor, but — if he can do it by the end of the season — Pope could have a potent weapon for a run in March.
Kerr Kriisa
The most intriguing player on the team — and certainly one who could take it to the next level if everything falls into place — is Kerr Kriisa.
The 6-3 playmaker came to the United States from Estonia, and — after playing just eight games as a freshman at Arizona — emerged as the starting point guard for two very good Wildcats teams. He left Zona last summer for West Virginia, and that situation deteriorated when Hall of Fame head coach Bob Huggins departed after an offseason arrest.
The Mountaineers finished with the worst record in the Big 12, but Kriisa can hardly be blamed for that mess. Still, it raised eyebrows around college basketball when he joined the wave of transfers into Pope’s program, with outside questions about how he’d fit this roster.
No games have been played, obviously, but it’s so far, so good, according to those on the inside.
Kriisa is saying the right things off the court — even referring to fellow point guard Lamont Butler as “PG1” in summer interviews — and his flashy game has apparently meshed well with his new teammates. Any fears that Kriisa would try to do too much with the ball have been unfounded so far. Instead, Pope has raved about his basketball smarts.
Talk of the intense practice battles between the two UK point guards leaked early in the summer, but there’s clearly a mutual respect between Kriisa and Butler, and it won’t be a surprise if they share the court often — perhaps even starting alongside each other — once the real games begin.
Even Kriisa’s reputation as a trash-talker has been embraced by his teammates, who are feeding off the energy he’s bringing to practice sessions.
If Kriisa can play within himself, he could be a revelation this season. Pope and longtime assistant Cody Fueger — the “offensive coordinator” on the UK staff — have coveted Kriisa going back to his time in Estonia, and they’re both eager to finally see what he can do in their system.
This offense seems perfectly suited for Kriisa, who can shoot (42.4% from deep last season), pass (at least 4.7 assists per game in each of the past three seasons) and create space for himself and others with his shiftiness out on the floor. The early practice buzz indicates he’s shooting lights out and thriving within the structure that Pope and his staff have constructed.
If Kriisa can carry that over to the season, he’ll be one of the most exciting players in the country.
