Mark Pope’s new freshman class reflects changes around college basketball
As Jasper Johnson’s first interview session as a Kentucky basketball player was wrapping up, a couple of familiar faces wandered over to the gaggle of reporters gathered around the freshman guard.
The pair — each a head taller than everyone else in the crowd — stood at the back of the group, their wide smiles easily making it into Johnson’s line of sight. A few minutes earlier, the new UK player had been talking about “a couple of the guys” on the team who’d started “water fights” in the Wildcat Lodge this summer, an anecdote recalled warmly in the spirit of camaraderie.
It turns out the culprits had arrived.
With the basketball-related questions drying up, one of the observers in the back got Johnson’s attention.
“Jasper, I got a question,” said the taller of the two, who was then told to identify himself.
Malachi Moreno did so, then kept talking.
“What’s it like rooming with Malachi at the lodge?” asked the 7-footer.
Johnson repeated the question to himself. “Hasn’t been too good, honestly,” he said to laughter. “Last night, I’m peacefully sleeping in my room, Malachi lets the door open for a couple of teammates I’m not going to (name). They shoot me with water guns at like 11:30 at night.
“It’s cool, though. I’m going to get some (payback), for sure.”
Then came another question from the back.
It was Braydon Hawthorne, a 6-8 forward and the third player on UK’s 2025-26 roster who was still in high school this time last year. Johnson basically ignored his question, but he still had a response.
“You said Braydon Hawthorne, right?” Johnson clarified, with a grin. “You’re one of the guys who had involvement with the water situation, so I got a problem with you, as well. But we’ll handle that.”
And so ended Johnson’s first UK basketball interview session. A little more than 12 hours after getting blasted awake by water guns at the team lodge, Johnson walked out of the room with the teammates responsible for the prank. Smiles all around. Real freshman stuff.
And while Mark Pope won’t want to hear about such hijinks on the night before a game this winter, summertime stories like this surely bring a smile to the face of the UK coach, as well.
Pope, like any good coach, is conscious of the importance of any harmless activities that lead to camaraderie among his players. He’s also presiding over a much different landscape than his predecessor, a program looking for a foundation of roster continuity with veteran players leading the way. A return to a time when the kids on the team could be kids. For a little while, at least.
Kentucky’s new freshman class
For the 15 years of the John Calipari era, being a Kentucky basketball player with “freshman” next to your name and a certain amount of stars on your recruiting profile meant immense expectations to perform immediately as a Wildcat.
Calipari’s final UK team was a perfect illustration of this, with two highly touted recruits — Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham — emerging as one-and-done NBA lottery picks, while three others — D.J. Wagner, Justin Edwards and Aaron Bradshaw — struggled to live up to the hype and were labeled disappointments.
But as Calipari’s time at Kentucky drew to a close, college basketball continued to shift — even more sharply — in favor of experienced players who stuck around a little longer due to guaranteed NIL earnings and the freedom of the transfer portal.
Even so, Pope’s first freshman class was a bit of a UK basketball culture shock.
Collin Chandler, Trent Noah and Travis Perry were all promising players, but none were expected to be major factors for the Wildcats last season, and — outside of a few moments here and there — none were. That roster featured seven seniors and a junior (Otega Oweh) who led the team in scoring.
Meanwhile, the three freshmen all endured long stretches of not playing at all (or playing very little). This season’s UK team is likely to look more like that one than the squads of the Calipari era, even though Johnson, Moreno and Hawthorne have plenty of talent to go around, too.
All three of those players have realistic NBA aspirations, but Johnson — long regarded as a five-star recruit in the 2025 class — is the only one who’s talking openly about one-and-done potential.
The former Woodford County star is plenty talented, but there are still holes in his game. He’s not generally regarded as a likely starter for this Kentucky team, with point guard Jaland Lowe and Oweh written in Sharpie on those lineup projections and senior transfer Denzel Aberdeen typically added in as a third guard in the starting backcourt.
Moreno is a McDonald’s All-American, the state’s reigning Mr. Basketball and a 7-footer with serious skill away from the basket, but his comments so far have revolved around helping this UK team in whatever way possible. He’s projected as a role player in the frontcourt, with that role looking considerably smaller if likely NBA lottery pick Jayden Quaintance returns to full health following a serious knee injury.
Hawthorne rocketed to No. 33 in the final 247Sports recruiting rankings, but he’s incredibly thin for his size, knows he needs to bulk up to come close to fully realizing his long-term potential and seems unlikely to play major minutes this season.
Pope’s other freshman is Andrija Jelavic, who is already 21 years old with two seasons of professional ball in Europe under his belt. He’s still on track to arrive in the United States later this month but is a total wild card as far as immediate expectations are concerned.
Kentucky’s roster will feature 10 other scholarship-level players, with two seniors (Oweh and Aberdeen) and three juniors (Lowe, Brandon Garrison and Mouhamed Dioubate) expected to play starter-level minutes, with plenty of others (Chandler, Quaintance and Kam Williams among them) fighting for playing time.
In a college basketball world that just saw veteran-laden teams from Florida and Houston battle for the national title — with experience-heavy programs like Purdue and St. John’s joining those two teams at the top of preseason Top 25 lists — the class setup is likely a good one for Kentucky.
Learning the UK basketball ropes
While there won’t be much of a path for these UK freshmen to average 30ish minutes per game this season — as so many Calipari-era kids did in the past — the 2025-26 dynamic can still be a positive one for the young Wildcats.
Moreno spent this summer practicing against players his size for the first time in his career.
“It’s definitely been a little different, but it’s also been very beneficial,” he said. “Kind of just teaching me, ‘I gotta be stronger. I gotta be more physical. I gotta use my body to my advantage.’ Because I have length on a lot of other people, but they may have physicality on me. … So just having that mindset of, ‘I got to be more physical, and I just have to want it more’ — that’s been very helpful.”
Moreno showed off his basketball smarts by citing NBA stars Kevin Durant and Rudy Gobert as less-bulky players who can use their length to their advantage while playing against bigger, stronger opponents. His teammates also cited him as a player who’s been especially vocal in UK’s earliest practices, to the point where Pope acknowledged that fact aloud to the team during a recent session.
247Sports national analyst Travis Branham sees a particularly good setup for Hawthorne.
“He’s in a great situation,” Branham said. “Not only because he gets to learn from these players and learn from a guy like Otega Oweh and just be a sponge for a year. But it goes back to: there’s no pressure. You have all these guys, and they’re going to show you how to impact the game and impact it at a very high level, and go out and win a bunch of big-time games throughout the course of the season. There’s no pressure. This is just going to be a huge learning experience for him this year. And he has that mindset. He knows, ‘I’m here, and I’m going to learn as much as I can this year.’”
Hawthorne is listed at 6-8 and 175 pounds. He needs to add bulk and strength to his frame. And he’s so skilled that — until he does — it’ll be difficult to project his long-term position on the court. That makes this UK crew an especially good one to learn from.
“You have a workhorse in Mo Dioubate — just a hard-hat type player,” Branham said of the burly forward. “Watch how Kam Williams goes out and approaches his development, and learn alongside each other. And then see guys like Otega Oweh — how he approaches the game every single night, how he leads a team. I think he’s just in a circumstance that can be hugely impactful to his long-term development.”
And then there’s Johnson, who doesn’t try to hide his one-and-done aspirations, even while knowing he might need to stick around for at least two seasons to find a starting role in Lexington. Wherever he ends up after year one, Johnson’s in a good spot for the time being.
“It’s another situation where he’s coming in with a national champion in Denzel Aberdeen. You have an extremely experienced point guard in Jaland Lowe. You obviously have Otega. So you have three guys right there that will be in the backcourt with you to really show you the ropes,” Branham said.
“So it will be up to him to really kind of take to that and be a sponge. And be focused on that aspect, and not so much on the NBA aspect, like we see some kids get caught up in where they see these (teammates), and it becomes a competition rather than a learning thing. So if he comes in and he learns from those guys, I think he can make some real progress and develop his game quite a bit between November and March.”
Lowe, who spent the last two seasons at Pittsburgh, has been in a similar spot. He had NBA hype attached to his name as a freshman and learned alongside some talented and veteran teammates.
“My freshman year — I looked up to older guys and leaned on them when I didn’t really know what was going on,” Lowe said. “And now, having gone through that and seeing where he is — talent-wise and everything like that — I feel like we’re just going to help him go to another level. Compete with him every day, bring the best out of him. And he’s going to bring the best out of us, too. Because as young as he is — even though he’s a freshman — he’s going to come back and he’s going to bark at us, too.
“So it’s gonna be some battles, for sure. But he’s going to be more than ready.”
So far, it sounds like Johnson is balancing those one-and-done hopes with the relative humility it takes to become a key piece on a team like the one Pope has assembled for this season. If he — and his fellow freshmen — can keep up that balancing act over the next several months, everyone involved is likely to benefit.
“It’s a great thing,” Johnson said of learning from the older guards. “I talk to all of them every day — talking about how it was for them coming into college, what things they had to adjust to, what things that they learned and picked up on, and what they’re working on to get to that next level. I know all of us have dreams of going to the NBA, and I feel like all of us can get that job done.
“But just trying to learn off each other — I mean, I’m young, new, coming in, trying to pick their mind each and every day. I know they probably get tired of me doing that, but it’s a great experience. They’re having fun with it — teaching me — and I’m just learning.”
