Kentucky adds a national champion transfer to 2025-26 basketball roster
Denzel Aberdeen, a member of the national champion Florida Gators this past season and a recent addition to the college basketball transfer portal, committed to Kentucky on Monday.
The 6-foot-5 guard from Orlando had been with the Gators for the past three seasons and played a key role in the team’s run to the 2025 NCAA title. During the 2024-25 season, he averaged 7.7 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 19.7 minutes per game, starting five times in 39 total appearances.
Aberdeen was 36-for-103 from 3-point range (35.0%) and 70.8% on free throws. He can also play on the ball, making him a candidate to spell fellow transfer Jaland Lowe — the Cats’ presumed starting point guard next season — while also playing major minutes elsewhere in the UK backcourt.
A Gator for all three of Todd Golden’s seasons as head coach, Aberdeen initially committed to Florida when Mike White was still in charge of the program and was the only recruit who stuck with his pledge after the coaching change.
Both before and after Florida’s victory over Houston in the national title game this month, Golden pointed to Aberdeen’s decision to stick around in Gainesville as an integral part of the roster-building process that led the Gators to the top of the sport this past season.
His decision to enter the transfer portal last week came as a surprise. He was expected to start next season for Florida, which lost key backcourt players Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard from the 2024-25 roster.
Aberdeen scored seven points in 18 minutes in the national championship game. He played at least 14 minutes in every one of Florida’s NCAA Tournament games and scored 12 points in the team’s victory over Maryland in the Sweet 16.
He also scored in double figures a total of 10 times against high-major competition during the 2024-25 season and set a career high with 22 points against South Carolina, going 5-for-7 from 3-point range in that game.
Aberdeen was sixth in scoring, sixth in minutes played and fourth in made 3-pointers for the Gators this past season.
Kentucky basketball’s 2025-26 roster
Kentucky coach Mark Pope has made a point of adding more athleticism and versatility to his entire roster going into the 2025-26 season, and Aberdeen is yet another player who should provide a boost in both categories.
He is the fifth player that UK has added out of the portal this offseason, joining Lowe — the starting point guard at Pittsburgh in 2024-25 — as well as former Tulane wing Kam Williams, former Alabama forward Mouhamed Dioubate and former Arizona State post player Jayden Quaintance.
Aberdeen has been slotted in at No. 59 nationally in the 247Sports transfer rankings, and Kentucky now ranks No. 4 in the country in the team transfer rankings on that website.
The Cats are also expected to bring back post player Brandon Garrison and guards Collin Chandler, Trent Noah and Travis Perry from the 2024-25 roster, with Otega Oweh — the Cats’ leading scorer this past season — also a possibility to be back in Lexington for one more year. Oweh has declared for the NBA draft but has until May 28 to remove his name from consideration and return to school.
Current college basketball players will have until 11:59 p.m. EDT Tuesday to enter the portal.
UK will also be bringing in five-star guard Jasper Johnson, McDonald’s All-American post player Malachi Moreno and Croatian big man Andrija Jelavic as first-year college players.
Even before the addition of Aberdeen on Monday, the Wildcats were viewed as a preseason top 10 team by several national outlets. Pope led Kentucky to an appearance in the Sweet 16 in his first season as the program’s head coach, the furthest UK had advanced in the NCAA Tournament since 2019.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 12:53 PM.
