Another Kentucky basketball rotation player is headed for the transfer portal
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mo Dioubate is planning to enter the NCAA transfer portal after one season at Kentucky.
- Dioubate averaged 8.8 points and 5.5 rebounds; 3P shooting dropped to 21.4%.
- Pope will reshuffle the roster amid cap-management constraints as several depart.
Another key player from Mark Pope’s 2025-26 Kentucky basketball roster is leaving the program.
Mouhamed Dioubate, a celebrated addition to UK’s transfer class last offseason, will be on the move again this spring. Dioubate is planning to enter the NCAA transfer portal when it opens Tuesday, according to a report from On3, bringing an end to his time in Lexington after just one season.
Dioubate played his first two years of college basketball at SEC rival Alabama, where he was a key player off the bench and flashed enough promise in that role to emerge as an intriguing and sought after transfer in last year’s portal.
247Sports ranked him as the No. 62 player in the portal last offseason.
As a sophomore, Dioubate averaged 7.2 points and 5.9 rebounds in 16.0 minutes per game, shooting 12 for 26 (46.2%) from 3-point range. The hope on Kentucky’s end was that a bigger role in Pope’s offense would bring out more of Dioubate’s all-around game and lead to the 6-foot-7 forward becoming more of a scoring and shooting threat.
That didn’t quite pan out. Dioubate averaged 8.8 points and 5.5 rebounds in 21.6 minutes per game for the Cats, and he shot just 6 for 28 (21.4%) from 3-point range.
Dioubate started in 10 of his first 11 appearances at UK, but he missed time early in the season with an ankle injury and was replaced by Andrija Jelavic in the starting lineup in January.
Pope did rely on Dioubate’s rebounding prowess and overall grit throughout the season, and Alabama coach Nate Oats continued to praise Dioubate’s toughness — noting that his team had been lacking in that department since his departure — at various points during the 2025-26 campaign.
Dioubate came off the bench in each of his final 20 appearances for the Cats, though he continued to play a meaningful role.
One of his best games as a Kentucky player came in the final victory of the season. He tallied 17 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots in a season-high 32 minutes to help UK beat Santa Clara in overtime in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Pope will be making several moves this spring to realign his roster, and that process will include letting some highly compensated players go as he looks to build a team capable of fitting in with his budget and on-court plans for the upcoming season.
Jaland Lowe, who was expected to be UK’s starting point guard this past season before a shoulder injury ended his junior year, has already revealed his plans to enter the transfer portal, as have freshman guard Jasper Johnson and junior center Brandon Garrison.
“In this time of college basketball, everyone’s got to make a decision about what’s going to work best for them and how they want to do it and where they want to do it,” Pope said on his final radio show of the season. “And retention is an important piece. But with cap management now, it all falls under that window. Everything is dependent on how it fits into a cap also.”
Dioubate will have one season of NCAA eligibility remaining at his new school.
