Travis Perry left Kentucky to show something more. He returns home this weekend
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Travis Perry entered the transfer portal and left Kentucky for Ole Miss.
- At Ole Miss he’s expanded minutes and 3-point role but growth remains.
- Saturday’s Rupp matchup will test Perry’s development.
This weekend will bring a reminder of the biggest surprise of the last Kentucky basketball offseason.
Not that anyone around here needs it.
Travis Perry’s last-minute decision to enter his name in the transfer portal last spring was a stunner to many UK fans, even though it made plenty of sense in this current landscape of college basketball.
Perry — the state of Kentucky’s all-time high school scoring leader — had been the closest thing to a bridge from the John Calipari era to the Mark Pope era.
All of Calipari’s players left the program after he departed for the Arkansas job following the 2023-24 season. And everyone in his top-ranked recruiting class decided to opt out, too.
Everyone except for Perry, who attended Pope’s introductory press conference in Rupp Arena two Aprils ago and quickly affirmed his commitment to the Cats and their new head coach a short time later.
The state’s reigning Mr. Basketball at the time, everything about Perry — a native of Lyon County in the far western part of the commonwealth — screamed Kentucky. So it was a shock to some when he decided to leave the Cats and, ultimately, join the Ole Miss Rebels last spring.
But this was a UK roster that had reloaded in the backcourt in the weeks leading up to that decision. Pope plucked Jaland Lowe, Denzel Aberdeen and Kam Williams out of the transfer portal. He brought in Jasper Johnson as a highly touted recruit. He brought back Collin Chandler from the previous season’s team, and the thinking around the program at the time was that Otega Oweh would return for one more season. (That thinking proved correct.)
It all left seemingly little opportunity for Perry, and he made his move accordingly.
“It was certainly devastating to me personally, because I enjoyed coaching him so much and I think he’s got a brilliant upside,” Pope said over the summer. “I think he was on his way to becoming a legend here at Kentucky.”
Instead, he’ll be playing against the Wildcats. And his first game as UK foe is Saturday at 11 a.m. in Rupp Arena. Will his old team have something special in store for Perry’s return?
“Yeah, hopefully a win,” Chandler said. “That would be the greatest gift — to beat him out of Rupp.”
The UK sophomore relayed that thought in a joking-not-joking sort of way. Of course, the Cats want to send Perry back to Oxford with a loss. But there are no hard feelings regarding his departure, especially among those who got to know him so well over the previous season.
Chandler, Perry and Trent Noah — the three freshmen on Pope’s first UK team — developed a close bond amid last season’s growing pains, and that bond remains.
“We love Travis, and we’re excited to play him,” Chandler said. “It’s gonna be competitive. And when we’re playing, obviously our relationship is different, but obviously me Trent and Travis were together as freshmen last year and had a special year together. And so I’m glad he’s doing well.”
Perry’s move to Ole Miss hasn’t gone exactly as planned — not yet, at least — but he is playing more there than he did at Kentucky last season. And even taking UK’s backcourt injuries into account — Lowe is out for the season; Williams might be, too, after breaking his foot Wednesday night — it’s difficult to see Perry having gotten a ton of run with the current Cats.
He is getting a regular opportunity to make a difference with the Rebels.
Travis Perry’s season with Ole Miss
Going into Saturday’s game, Perry was averaging 5.7 points in 15.5 minutes over 19 appearances — with seven starts — for coach Chris Beard’s team/
His numbers are up from last season in every major statistical category, and he’s shooting 36.1% from 3-point range with 4.4 long-range attempts per game. As a UK freshman, he shot 32.1% from deep while averaging just 1.8 attempts in 31 games, his playing time sporadic and his opportunities to get into any kind of rhythm rare.
Two of his three highest-scoring games as a sophomore have come in the past week and a half. Perry was 4 for 7 from 3-point range and scored 14 points in a win over Georgia last week. He was 5 for 8 from deep and scored 15 points last time out, one of the Rebels’ few bright spots in a loss to Auburn on Tuesday night.
Kentucky is well aware of the scout on the former Wildcat.
“We know Travis,” Chandler said. “… So we know what Travis is capable of, and it’s just a matter of him showing it in time. And hopefully he will not be in double figures on Saturday.”
Perry’s identity on the court will always be as a shooter, but he left Lexington in search of something more. “Travis and I share a vision for his game that he’s much, much more than a shooter,” Beard said in the preseason. “He’s a guy that can play multiple positions. … A high-IQ player.”
Ole Miss had major plans for Perry going into the season, and Beard had him in the Rebels’ starting lineup on opening night. His slow start — 0 for 9 from deep, just two points in 33 minutes on the court — knocked him out of that starting five after just two games, but he’s still played double-digit minutes in all but two games since heading to the bench.
He returned to the starting lineup for five games in December — going 5 for 11 from 3 and scoring a career-high 21 points in a loss to NC State during that stretch — before bouncing back to a reserve role for SEC play.
“I was very pleased with my freshman season at Kentucky, and I feel like we had a great group of guys I was able to learn a ton from. And just kind of transform my game,” Perry said before the season began. “It’s hard for any freshman coming in — especially for a freshman coming into the SEC, the best conference ever in college basketball — so I was very blessed to have that opportunity. So I have nothing but love and respect for those guys, wish them all the best.
“But, whenever I got in the portal, I felt that Coach Beard’s vision for me was exactly what I was looking for. And I felt like we had a lot of guys coming here that wanted to win, wanted to compete at a high level. And I felt like I could come in and impact that.”
Beard pursued Perry vigorously as a high school recruit, and that relationship was already established when the Kentucky native decided to hit the portal last spring.
Ole Miss was coming off one of its best basketball seasons ever. The Rebels earned a 6 seed and made the Sweet Sixteen in last year’s NCAA Tournament — their highest seed and best March Madness result since 2001 — and Beard reloaded with 12 new players for this season.
The 2025-26 campaign hasn’t gone as well. Ole Miss entered the weekend with an 11-8 overall record and sat No. 68 in the KenPom ratings. But the Rebels also entered Rupp with a 3-3 mark in SEC play and plenty of time to put together some quality wins for a Selection Sunday résumé.
Perry would likely be a big part of such a run. Through his first six SEC games, he’s shot 12 for 24 from 3-point range — while attempting only three 2-point shots — and that shooting ability will come in handy in close games against quality competition.
The other stuff — improving as a defender and facilitator at this level — remains a work in progress, but Perry has plenty of time to show that growth. He’s only halfway through his sophomore year, after all, with two more seasons beyond this one to hone his skills and find new ways — beyond shooting the ball — to make a difference on any given night.
The next step in that journey will be a bittersweet homecoming Saturday afternoon.
“It’s definitely a difficult decision — I think, for anybody really — to get in the portal,” Perry said. “... But I just felt like, at the end of the day, you got to make the best decision for yourself and your basketball career. You only get so much time to do it. You only get so much time to play basketball. So I felt like I just made the decision that myself and my family came to that was best for my basketball career.”
