UK basketball is hosting another Pro Day. Here’s who NBA scouts will be watching
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NBA scouts will assess 2026 draft prospects during Kentucky's 2025 Pro Day.
- Jayden Quaintance, a projected lottery pick, remains sidelined after ACL surgery.
- Kam Williams, a Tulane transfer, emerges as a key target with growing draft buzz.
A year ago, NBA scouts converged on Lexington for another Kentucky basketball Pro Day, a continuation of the annual event offering decision-makers from around the league an early look at the Wildcats.
That edition of UK Pro Day looked a lot different from years past. And this edition of UK Pro Day will look a lot different from last year’s showcase.
The event started under John Calipari, who went into just about every season with potential lottery picks and a roster stacked with NBA prospects. Mark Pope’s first Pro Day as head coach featured exactly zero surefire draft picks and no one with a realistic shot of going in lottery range.
The scouts who show up in Memorial Coliseum on Tuesday night should be in for a more interesting time.
The 2025 edition of UK Pro Day won’t be open to the public, but it will be available for fans to watch — 5:30 p.m. EDT on Tuesday with SEC Network+ streaming the event live — and this Kentucky roster is packed with potential.
The Wildcats’ headliner this season — from an NBA perspective — will be transfer big man Jayden Quaintance, but scouts won’t see much of him on this trip. Quaintance is still recovering from March surgery for a torn ACL and is expected to miss the first part of the 2025-26 schedule. He won’t be doing any extensive basketball work at Pro Day.
Quaintance is universally projected as a lottery pick, with a recent mock draft from Bleacher Report pegging him as the No. 4 overall selection in the 2026 NBA draft. ESPN’s first mock draft for next year had Quaintance at No. 6 overall.
Scouts will be in and out of Lexington all season long to see the 18-year-old.
Also expected to be limited Tuesday night is Otega Oweh, the team’s leading scorer last season and one of the Wildcats’ top NBA prospects going into this one.
Oweh pulled out of the 2025 draft at the deadline — he was considered to be a second-round pick, at best, at the time — and while a foot injury has delayed his start to fall practice, that setback is not expected to have any impact on his availability for the season.
It might relegate him to the sidelines for portions of Tuesday night’s event, however. Oweh was No. 57 in the Bleacher Report mock draft — and absent from ESPN’s summer projections — but the senior guard should have a chance to play his way into the first-round conversation.
The Wildcat who might get the most attention Tuesday? It could very well be Kam Williams, who hasn’t even made most starting lineup projections this offseason but transfers in from Tulane with an interesting profile, from a pro perspective.
Bleacher Report had him at No. 38 in its mock draft last month. ESPN projected him at No. 46 overall. And the buzz has been building over his potential at the next level.
J. Kyle Mann, who handles NBA draft duties for The Ringer, attended one of UK’s final workouts before the official start of fall practice last month, and his video recapping that experience lingered on Williams and his “very intriguing” attributes.
Mann praised Williams’ catch-and-shoot ability and his explosive cutting off the ball — two areas that should serve him well both in Pope’s system and as a potential pro. Williams won’t turn 20 years old until after the start of the season. He’s listed as a 6-foot-8, 205-pound guard — with a 7-foot wingspan — and has the athleticism and tenacity to make a versatile defensive impact.
“Beautiful shot,” Mann said of Williams, who made 63 3-pointers at a 41.2% rate as a freshman at Tulane last season and is among the early favorites to be UK’s top long-range shooter.
All that adds up to an intriguing NBA draft profile, even if he doesn’t start for the Wildcats.
NBA draft outlook for Kentucky players
Who else on Pope’s 2025-26 roster might be getting looks Tuesday night?
Pretty much everybody.
While mock drafts from reputable outlets are difficult to come by this time of year, several other Kentucky players have been mentioned in pro circles as possible picks. If not in 2026, then a little further down the line.
The Athletic actually had Jaland Lowe, presumed to end up as UK’s starting point guard, at No. 49 overall on its summer draft board. Freshman guard Jasper Johnson and junior big man Brandon Garrison have both openly talked about the 2026 draft being on their radar, and it wouldn’t be a shock to see either Cat play his way into that conversation.
Junior forward Mouhamed Dioubate — projected to be UK’s starting 4 — and sophomore guard Collin Chandler, who is likely to be one of the first backcourt players off the bench, are potential dark-horse draft picks.
Dioubate is an analytics darling based on his loud play in a relatively small sample size at Alabama and could work his way into the 2026 draft conversation if he can take advantage of what should be a much bigger opportunity this season.
Chandler was a near-five-star recruit out of high school but showed his rust last season after missing two years of basketball while on a Mormon mission. He did come on at the end of his freshman year, however, and he’s been one of the team’s buzziest players this offseason.
The 21-year-old guard could be one of Kentucky’s top 3-point shooters this season, and his two-way potential and versatility, especially as an offensive player, will draw the eyes of pro scouts.
Late-arriving international forward Andrija Jelavic has been on the periphery of the NBA draft discussion for a couple of years now. He’s been in Lexington for only a few weeks, and he’s still getting adjusted to Pope’s system — and American life in general — but he’s another player whom scouts will be watching over the course of the season.
Another benefit of this Pro Day? It should give scouts an early look at some borderline — or longer-term — draft prospects. These impressions can be used as a point of comparison for later evaluations to see how much, where or if Kentucky’s players improved.
While the Tuesday evening portion of Pro Day will be televised, there’s more to these trips than just that one showcase. Visiting NBA team officials typically get to watch multiple UK practices during Pro Day week.
Two more Cats of particular interest will be freshmen Braydon Hawthorne and Malachi Moreno, who likely won’t be on NBA draft boards heading into 2026 but come to college with legitimate first-round upside for the future.
There hasn’t been much draft buzz around senior guard Denzel Aberdeen, junior big man Reece Potter or sophomore forward Trent Noah, but stranger things have happened.
Aberdeen brings tremendous athleticism and was buried on the depth chart for most of his time at Florida, but he averaged 14.4 points and shot 41.4% from deep in five spot starts against top competition last season. What might he show with more playing time?
Potter is a 7-1 forward with perimeter skills and an ability to knock down 3-point shots. He wasn’t a regular starter in two seasons at Miami (Ohio) — and might find a path to meaningful playing time this season difficult — but his fit in Pope’s offense could be interesting.
And Noah, who has continued to work on his body and make improvements to his all-around game, might be UK’s best pure 3-point shooter.
Pope was finally able to celebrate his first and second NBA draft picks — Koby Brea and Amari Williams, respectively — after a decade as a college head coach this past summer. Neither of those players was widely projected as a first-round pick at UK’s Pro Day last fall.
With Quaintance likely to end up as the first Pope player to be selected in the first round, the question beyond that is who might join him at the 2026 draft. The next week or so will give scouts their best early look at possible candidates.
