How did Travis Perry perform in his Rupp Arena return with Ole Miss?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Former UK basketball player Travis Perry didn’t score for Ole Miss against the Wildcats.
- Perry was making his Rupp Arena return Saturday after transferring out of the UK program.
- Perry was a Lyon County star and is the leading scorer in Kentucky high school hoops.
Travis Perry’s Rupp Arena return was a struggle, to say the least.
Perry — the 6-foot-1 sophomore guard who transferred to Ole Miss from UK this past offseason — went scoreless in the Rebels’ 72-63 loss to the Wildcats on Saturday afternoon.
Perry made his eighth start of the season — his first in an SEC game — for Ole Miss, and he was met with a mixed reception by the Rupp crowd throughout the game. A mixture of boos and cheers rang around when Perry was announced in the Ole Miss starting lineup. Just about every time the ball was in Perry’s hands during the game, boos were directed his way, a majority of those from the vocal UK student sections.
But Perry also didn’t get a lot of chances to handle the ball. He played just 10 minutes in the game, including just three minutes in the second half. Perry missed all three shots he took from the field in the game. All of those were 3-point tries.
Perry was also credited with two rebounds and a steal in his time on the court.
“We just know where he’s going to get to. He’s a shooter, you can’t let him catch (for) wide-open shots and shoot them,” UK senior guard Otega Oweh said of shutting down Perry. “Just got to force him inside the 3 ,and I feel like we did a really good job. We have the scout, and we did a really good job of paying attention to that scout and implementing it into the game.”
Saturday marked Perry’s first game against the Wildcats since he made the last-minute choice to enter the NCAA transfer portal following his freshman season in Lexington.
From a wider view, Perry represented the final on-court link for the UK program between John Calipari and current coach Mark Pope. Perry was the lone member of Calipari’s 2024 high school recruiting class for UK who stuck with that pledge and played for Kentucky after Pope became the coach.
Perry also remains a legendary figure in the commonwealth for his storied high school career at Lyon County, where he won the 2024 Sweet 16 state championship and became the commonwealth’s all-time high school scoring leader.
Ahead of Saturday’s return game, Perry was averaging 5.7 points in 15.5 minutes per game for Chris Beard’s third Ole Miss team. Perry has played in all 20 of Ole Miss’ games this season after seeing action in 31 of Kentucky’s 36 games last season.
Perry’s biggest asset remains his 3-point shooting, and that has improved in his sophomore year. Entering Saturday’s game, Perry was converting at a 36.1% rate from 3-point range on an average of more than four attempts from deep per game. As a frosh at UK, Perry made just 32.1% of his 3-pointers on a fewer than two attempts per game.
In his first six SEC games of the season, Perry had been a 50% shooter from 3-point range (12 for 24).
UK players were well aware of the danger Perry presented when discussing their preparation for Ole Miss. But there still are good feelings between the current Cats and the former one.
“Travis is my guy,” UK freshman center Malachi Moreno said Friday. “Went to Italy together for Adidas EuroCamp, both from Kentucky. Unfortunately, he ended my season my junior year (of high school). So there’s some hatred there. But he’s my guy, and he’s at a place that he thought was the best fit for him. I’m happy that he’s thriving and he’s having fun.”
While there have been moments of that this season for Perry — he matched a career high with five made 3-pointers in Ole Miss’ loss to Auburn last week — there wasn’t much joy for Perry on Saturday against his former school.
“He’s obviously a great shooter. Everybody knows that. Everybody in the country knows that,” UK sophomore guard Collin Chandler said of Perry. “I think he found a few shots. And so it was just trying our best to contest with those shots as hard as we can for them. I thought we did well at that today.”
This story was originally published January 24, 2026 at 2:54 PM.
