He might be the brightest star on this UK basketball team. He’s waiting his turn
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky coaches weigh redshirt for freshman Hawthorne to prioritize development.
- Hawthorne shows advanced shooting and footwork in practices and pregame routines.
- Coaches balance immediate minutes against long-term NBA potential and roster fit.
To watch Braydon Hawthorne on the Rupp Arena court before Kentucky games this season has been something like watching a rough draft of basketball poetry in motion.
The UK freshman hasn’t yet made his debut as Wildcat, and that moment might still be a year or so away. In the meantime, those who have made their way into Rupp well before tipoff have been treated to a tease of the future.
Hawthorne is typically the first Wildcat out on the floor, casually putting up shots on his own — a team manager in tow to do the rebounding — around three hours before the designated start time of Kentucky’s games, donning whatever he happened to wear to the arena that night.
A little later in the evening — after a trip to the locker room to change into his gameday gear — the 19-year-old re-emerges to go through his normal routine. It starts with Hawthorne and a UK grad assistant working on agility and ball-handling drills. And then the real fun begins for those lucky enough to be watching from the sidelines.
Hawthorne’s shooting regimen is something to see. The 6-foot-8 forward rapidly puts up shots from stationary spots on the court. He mimics coming off screens to let it fly in catch-and-shoot situations. He gets a start 30 feet or so from the basket and shoots off the dribble.
More often than not, the ball goes through the hoop. And even when Hawthorne misses his mark, following his fluid footwork and silky smooth stroke would lead you to believe the shot will drop.
“He’s super advanced,” said senior teammate Otega Oweh. “And he’s young, too. So all of that is just natural. I feel like once he really figures out his game — and like, himself — that’s when he’s really going to take that jump.”
So far, that’s been the objective of his first several months in Lexington.
Hawthorne came to Kentucky knowing that this might be how his first season in college basketball would unfold. He was originally committed to West Virginia — the Beckley native’s home-state school — before a coaching change there led to a reopened recruitment.
There was talk around this time last year that Hawthorne would redshirt at WVU during his first season in college. But a final year of high school that saw him rocket up the recruiting rankings — he ended up at No. 33 in the final 247Sports rankings for the 2025 class — complicated his short-term outlook.
When Hawthorne ended up at UK — a freshman on a roster that runs deep — the redshirt talk persisted. And that’s where things remain eight games into the 2025-26 campaign.
“We’re having these ongoing conversations with our whole staff and his whole team,” UK coach Mark Pope said on his radio show last week. “The interesting thing about a redshirt is, once you burn it for one second, you can’t get it back. And so we’re just trying to make sure that that’s the direction we want to go.”
To Pope’s point, the current rules around basketball redshirts are not the same as football. A relatively recent NCAA rule change allowed football players to appear in up to four regular-season games without using up a season of eligibility. That’s not the case in basketball. Play in just one game and — barring an injury that falls within certain parameters — that player won’t be able to get that year back.
Pope has already confirmed that UK plans to redshirt 7-1 center Reece Potter, a Lexington native with a ton of upside. He’s been less clear on Hawthorne, and the fan question that prompted his response on last week’s radio show was a logical one.
It seems like Hawthorne could be able to move on to the NBA after fewer than four years of college ball — yes, his upside is that high — so wouldn’t it be more beneficial to this season’s team to give him as many short stints on the court as possible, especially with the Cats struggling as much as they have been?
The simple answer would be yes. But Pope clearly sees the benefit in patience.
Why would UK redshirt Braydon Hawthorne?
Pope’s reasoning on why Hawthorne might sit out this season comes down to a longer-term vision for what is clearly a special player.
“He is a really, really, really terrific young talent,” the UK coach said. “And he has an incredibly bright future. He also, right now, needs to grow. Like, there’s so much growth in him. And the advantage of redshirting is that he gets to be solely, uniquely focused on developing. He doesn’t have the distractions of a game twice a week, where he’s altering his workout program or his preparation or anything else.”
Pope then played devil’s advocate to his own point.
“But there’s also the value in minutes,” he said. “So we’re just trying to make absolutely sure that we’re making the right decision before we burn it. And we’ll see how that goes over the next couple of weeks.”
Even those who see his glaringly bright talent acknowledge there’s a long way to go. And those closest to him have seen how far Hawthorne has had to come to get to this point.
“He’s doing the typical freshman route,” Oweh said. “You know, in the beginning, you’re kind of figuring it out. Your head is spinning. A whole lot is getting thrown at you. But now he’s real comfortable. We’ve seen him in practice every day. He’s starting to understand the speed, the rhythm, just everything. Not just playing — you got to think it. So, Braydon is really good. It’s just a matter of when he gets on the court — he’s gonna be really effective.”
Putting him in a position to be effective when he does debut for the Cats is the top priority for Pope and the coaching staff, who are already juggling their lineups to try and figure out which of these Wildcats work best together. Once all that gets sorted out — and talented teammates return from injuries — some who are currently playing likely won’t see as many minutes.
Adding Hawthorne into that mix might only complicate matters.
And as smooth as he looks in those pregame routines, one other thing sticks out immediately to anyone watching. He’s skinny. Very skinny.
As Oweh talked up his young teammate’s overall skill level, he was asked if simply getting stronger was perhaps the biggest hurdle for Hawthorne to climb. “Yeah,” he said. “Literally.”
Hawthorne is listed at 6-8 and 170 pounds. To put that number in perspective, freshman teammate Jasper Johnson, who has acknowledged he needs to add strength before realizing his dream of making it to the NBA, is listed at 6-5 and 180.
“Us guarding him every single day is gonna make him way better,” Oweh said of Hawthorne’s learning curve with larger players. “... He’s knowing that practice is where he’s really gonna get better and get comfortable for the game.”
And even if his game stays hidden from most for the next several months, he can still be a benefit to this Kentucky team. Sophomore guard Collin Chandler says that’s already happening.
“Braydon Hawthorne has been probably the life of the team,” he said. “His energy is the same every day. And I know that’s something that people can just say, but it really is true. His energy is great for our team, and it really brings light.
“Because there’s a lot of outside things that affect everybody as the season goes on, and having someone like that — who can bring everybody together — has a lot of power. Even if he’s not playing. Even if BBN isn’t watching him play, he has a lot of power.”
Chandler went on to say that Hawthorne “has been killing it” on the scout team. He most recently served as the stand-in for North Carolina freshman Caleb Wilson — a long, athletic player projected to be an NBA lottery pick — before UK’s game against the Tar Heels. Wilson was able to do plenty to help UNC in its 67-64 win over Kentucky, but the Cats did hold him to 5-for-19 shooting from the floor.
In the preseason, Pope compared Hawthorne to one of the greatest UK players ever. “There’s a whole bunch of Tayshaun Prince in this kid,” he said, knowing full well the gravity of that statement.
Whether what Pope appears to be attempting to do — recruit an NBA-level talent, convince him to sit for an entire season and then retain him after a redshirt year — is even possible these days remains to be seen. The college basketball landscape has changed tremendously, and this type of experiment would have been considered a heavy lift in just about any era.
So far, Hawthorne has progressed on the court while keeping his head high off of it.
“Human nature is focusing on, ‘Me, me, me. What’s going on, what’s going wrong for me? Why is Coach not playing me?’ And that’s a constant battle that I think Braydon wins a lot of the times — focusing on us, on a collective we instead of me,” Chandler said. “And so I think he’s a perfect example for us as a team of someone who is thinking outside of themselves.”
Having a guy like Chandler around can certainly help. He knows what it means to be patient. The former star recruit put basketball aside for two years to go on a church mission and had to do a lot of sitting and watching before finally getting his opportunity toward the end of last season. He’s been in Hawthorne’s ear for the first few weeks of this one.
Chandler’s advice has been to make the most out of whatever opportunities arise.
“When you do get the reps — or when they put you in a part of the drill where maybe you’re not wanting to be in — how can you focus on getting better at that one little thing? Because that’s really what it takes,” he said, from the perspective of someone who was going through the same thing this time last year. “... Just focus on getting better at the things that you can control.
“It’s so hard when you’re in it, though. It’s easier to say it, rather than to actually be in that situation. But he’s great at learning and listening. He’s always humble (about) learning, for sure.”
