Transfer portal additions give Mark Pope’s second UK basketball team defensive upside
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky added top defensive talent via the transfer portal, led by Jayden Quaintance.
- The new additions rank among the portal’s best in Defensive Bayesian Performance Rating.
- Improving its defense remains priority after UK ranked 51st in adjusted efficiency.
When you think back to last offseason — and Mark Pope’s on-the-fly efforts to build his first Kentucky basketball team from scratch — a trend of defensive-focused additions emerged for the Wildcats.
Think Lamont Butler, Brandon Garrison, Otega Oweh and Amari Williams. These additions panned out well on both ends of the floor for the Cats, particularly in the case of Oweh from an offensive perspective. But still, prior to last season, these players were viewed as defense-first pickups for Pope’s program.
Now, it’s happening again.
Evan Miyakawa — the college basketball statistician who helped identify this defensive trend with UK’s roster last year — has noticed that Pope, once again, is taking a strong defensive approach with his offseason adds from the portal.
The likes of Mouhamed Dioubate (Alabama) and Jayden Quaintance (Arizona State) are projected to provide major defensive value for the Wildcats next season.
According to Miyakawa’s transfer portal rankings at EvanMiya.com, both Dioubate and Quaintance rank among the top four players in the portal in Defensive Bayesian Performance Rating. This is a measurement of defensive value as a representation of how many defensive points per 100 possessions better than the Division I average a player is.
Miyakawa projects Quaintance to be the best defensive transfer portal addition of the offseason for any school. Quaintance — who averaged 7.9 rebounds, 2.6 blocks and 1.1 steals per game last season at Arizona State — is projected to be 3.86 defensive points per 100 possessions better than the Division I average next season.
Dioubate isn’t far behind: His projected DBPR of 2.78 for next season ranks fourth among portal players.
Last season at Alabama, Dioubate averaged 5.9 rebounds and nearly 1 steal per contest.
“They clearly focused again on the defensive end for some of these players, especially on the interior when you’re talking about Jayden Quaintance and Mo Dioubate being two of the highest value defensive guys in the portal,” Miyakawa told the Herald-Leader last month.
And despite not being highly ranked in Miyakawa’s metrics, the statistician sees tremendous defensive value in Denzel Aberdeen, who comes to Kentucky after three seasons as (mainly) a role player at Florida. There’s obvious championship pedigree on offer with Aberdeen, who made five starts and averaged 19.7 minutes per game for a Florida team that won the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament earlier this year.
While Aberdeen’s projected DBPR for next season is only a slight positive (0.22), Miyakawa noted several of the defensive traits that Aberdeen has a reputation for.
“(He) was regarded by many as being one of the best on-ball defenders in the SEC last year and a big part of what (Florida) was able to do defensively to win a championship,” Miyakawa said.
Incoming UK guard Jaland Lowe (a projected DBPR of 1.51) and wing Kam Williams (1.22) are also both expected to be plus players for the Wildcats on the defensive end next season.
UK basketball needs to make defensive strides next season
Defense, at times, was a limiting factor for the Wildcats during the 2024-25 season.
There were plenty of low points on that end of the floor during Pope’s first season at UK, be it an early SEC loss at Georgia, the defensive capitulation in a February loss at Ole Miss or the season-ending defeat to Tennessee in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
For the season, Kentucky ranked 51st in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. And this mark came after the Cats made some big strides on the defensive end of the court to close the season.
That defensive ranking (51st) was the third-worst among teams that KenPom ranked as the 20 best overall teams in the country last season. The two worst schools were Purdue (53rd and losers in the Sweet 16) and Missouri (68th and losers in the first round of the tournament).
Since 1997, the vast majority of NCAA champions have had a KenPom defense that ranked among the top 15 nationally. The only outliers from this group are North Carolina (18th in 2009), Baylor (22nd in 2021) and Kansas (17th in 2022).
It’s clear that Kentucky needs to continue on its trajectory of improvement on the defensive end. And Miyakawa said there’s reason for optimism in this pursuit.
“I love that approach of making sure that you’re bringing in pieces who are going to lay the defensive foundation,” he said.
During his lone press conference of the offseason thus far on May 13, Pope was clear in his message that his players are known for making big leaps during their second years in his system.
On the defensive end, this means improvement will also be expected from returnees Collin Chandler, Trent Noah, Garrison and Oweh, who recently made the call to withdraw from NBA draft consideration and play his senior season at Kentucky.
Last season, both Garrison (a DBPR of 0.63) and Oweh (1.81) were individual positives on the defensive end for UK. Combined, Kentucky’s four returnees accounted for 44.2% of UK’s steals and 29% of UK’s blocks last season.
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 6:10 AM.
