Transfer portal deadline day was eventful. Here’s what it meant for Kentucky
The college basketball transfer portal closed for new entrants Tuesday night.
Deadline day brought a little relief for Kentucky.
While UK didn’t land any more players out of the portal Tuesday, the program did receive confirmation that high-upside freshman Braydon Hawthorne would be back in Lexington for the 2026-27 season.
Hawthorne signaled his intention to return to the Cats during an interview with the Herald-Leader last month and reiterated that stance inside UK’s open locker rooms during the NCAA Tournament, but his silence on the issue since the season ended led to speculation that he might be looking elsewhere this spring.
Those worries proved to be unfounded with Hawthorne’s announcement Tuesday afternoon that he would be back with Kentucky after sitting out the 2025-26 season as a redshirt player while practicing with the Cats and working on his strength and conditioning behind the scenes.
The 6-foot-8 forward from West Virginia is expected to be a rotation player for Mark Pope’s team next season, and his unique blend of size, athleticism and shooting ability has led to NBA draft buzz before he appears in his first college basketball game.
Keeping him in Kentucky was a big development for Pope, even if it was the expected one.
The player’s younger brother, Zyon Hawthorne, also committed to the Cats on Tuesday. The 6-2 guard is not expected to play a major role on the team next season, but he will help fill out a UK roster that still has several empty spots.
Adding the Hawthorne brothers to the mix gives Pope nine players for his projected roster for the 2026-27 season. While “walk-ons” are no longer a designation, due to recent NCAA rule changes, teams are permitted to fill up to 15 spots, and the commitment of Zyon Hawthorne should give the program another high-level practice player at the point guard position.
The rest of UK’s projected roster at this point includes point guard Zoom Diallo and combo guard Alex Wilkins — both transfer portal additions — returnees Malachi Moreno, Kam Williams, Trent Noah and Reece Potter, and four-star high school point guard Mason Williams.
Ensuring all of those returnees made it past the transfer portal deadline was key for Kentucky, but Pope still needs some high-level talent to fill out his roster.
And while it was a relatively quiet day for the Cats, the lead-up to the transfer portal deadline was plenty eventful elsewhere.
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Transfer portal deadline day
A reminder: players who entered the portal by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday will be permitted to choose a new school at any time. There is no deadline for those college decisions, so Pope still has time to piece together his 2026-27 roster.
Top options are dwindling, however, with most of the highly ranked players in the portal having already selected their new schools.
Deadline day did see some high-profile additions to the transfer list, a group that included Baylor forward Tounde Yessoufou (a major UK target during his high school recruitment), Florida State forward Thomas Bassong and former McDonald’s All-American Niko Bundalo, who played sparingly as a freshman at Ole Miss last season.
There were also some instances of players who have already exhausted their NCAA eligibility (under the current rules) jumping into the portal before Tuesday’s deadline. That group included Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr., Texas guard Jordan Pope, Arkansas center Malique Ewin and Vanderbilt center Jalen Washington, among others.
Players who have already used up their eligibility will need to either be granted a waiver from the NCAA to play an extra year or benefit from proposed rule changes that would add a fifth year of eligibility for all student-athletes. While such a change is being considered, there is no timetable for implementation, leaving potential fifth-year players in limbo for the time being.
Here’s a look at some other major developments from portal deadline day:
- Former Wisconsin shooting guard John Blackwell, who is ranked by 247Sports as the nation’s No. 3 transfer, committed to Duke on Tuesday, bolstering a Blue Devils’ roster that was already considered to be a top-10 group. Blackwell’s addition should solidify Duke as a legitimate Final Four contender in 2027.
- Former Saint Mary’s power forward Paulius Murauskas, the No. 9 player on the 247Sports transfer list, committed to Arizona State on Tuesday. Murauskas was linked to Kentucky as a potential target early in the portal window, and Louisville picked up some steam more recently, but he ultimately chose to follow coach Randy Bennett, who was at Saint Mary’s for 25 years before taking the Arizona State job this spring.
- With Blackwell and Murauskas off the board, only six players in the top 50 of the current 247Sports transfer rankings remain uncommitted: Iowa State forward Milan Momcilovic (No. 2), Santa Clara forward Allen Graves (No. 4), Arizona State center Massamba Diop (No. 5), Wake Forest forward Juke Harris (No. 7), Cincinnati center Moustapha Thiam (No. 12) and N.C. State guard Paul McNeil (No. 32). Those rankings will be updated with the final wave of portal additions soon.
- Of that group in the top 50, only Momcilovic and Graves have been linked to Kentucky so far, and both of those players are currently going through the NBA draft process, which will have a May 27 withdrawal deadline. Duke and LSU have been talked about as the top contenders for Graves since he entered the portal, though both of those programs have already added impact players at the 4 position. Momcilovic, who could still remain in the 2026 draft, appears to be wide open for potential college suitors. If the 6-8 sharpshooter pulls out of the draft and is indeed open to overtures from Kentucky, he could be a perfect fit for UK’s needs.
- Louisville continued to bolster its No. 1-ranked transfer class Tuesday with the addition of Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras, who was ranked No. 64 by 247Sports and joins a group that already included Kansas center Flory Bidunga (No. 1), Oregon point guard Jackson Shelstad (No. 17) and Arkansas forward Karter Knox (No. 58). Pat Kelsey’s team was ranked No. 20 in the CBS preseason 2026-27 rankings before Folgueiras’ commitment.
International route for Kentucky?
It’s important to remember that the transfer portal won’t be Mark Pope’s only avenue for adding players this offseason.
The past couple of years have featured a rise in the number of international prospects coming to the United States to play college basketball, with lucrative NIL-related opportunities now available to such players and the NCAA serving as a proving ground for those with NBA aspirations.
With Pope still in need of a starting 4 and realistic portal options dwindling, the Herald-Leader was told earlier this week that Kentucky would once again target an international addition to fill that position — and possibly other spots on the roster — should the Cats miss on Syracuse transfer Donnie Freeman, who ended up committing to St. John’s on Monday night.
With Freeman now out of the picture, look for the Cats to get tied to some intriguing possibilities playing professionally in Europe this season.
The same thing happened last year, when Pope was looking to fill out his roster and added Andrija Jelavic, who had played the previous two seasons for a top Serbian team.
Jelavic committed to the Cats on April 12, but an academic calendar snafu prevented him from joining the team until August, so he missed out on UK’s eight-week summer practice session and all of the extra strength and conditioning work that coincided with that.
If Pope does indeed add any prominent international players this spring, he’ll try to get them on campus for the summer session. The 2026-27 UK team is expected to arrive in Lexington in early June, with the eight-week session slated to begin in the middle of that month.
Todd Golden to the Warriors?
Another potential path to adding players this offseason is more of a long shot, but it’s worth considering given the current buzz surrounding one high-profile college basketball coach.
On Monday night, Yahoo Sports reported that Florida coach Todd Golden would be a potential target for the Golden State Warriors if their longtime coach, Steve Kerr, does not return for the 2026-27 season.
Speculation linking Golden to the NBA has been out there for a while, and that chatter will likely continue for as long as he’s getting results at the college level. The 40-year-old spent six years at the University of San Francisco before landing the Florida job.
Golden is set to have perhaps the No. 1 team in the preseason rankings if he stays put in Gainesville, with Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu, Boogie Fland and Urban Klavzar all expected to return to the Gators, who have also added ex-UK guard Denzel Aberdeen via the portal. (Aberdeen, who spent his first three seasons at Florida, would need an NCAA waiver or a change to the current eligibility rules to play for the Gators next season.)
If Golden does leave for the NBA, the transfer portal would basically open back up for the players he leaves behind. In that scenario, a 15-day transfer period for the Gators would open five days after the new head coach is hired or publicly announced.
Obviously, even if such a thing happened, there’s no guarantee that all or any of the current Florida players would pursue a transfer, but other programs looking for top-tier talent would surely be back-channeling their interest if Golden leaves.
His departure could also cause another ripple effect across the college basketball coaching landscape, perhaps leading to other openings and that “coaching change” transfer provision to occur at other schools.
Golden has a lot of reasons to stay put in this cycle, but his situation will be monitored closely in the coming weeks.
Billy Donovan is available
The last head coach to leave Florida for the NBA is looking for a job once again.
On the final day leading up to the college basketball transfer portal deadline, the biggest news out of the NBA was Billy Donovan’s decision to step down as head coach of the Chicago Bulls.
Donovan, of course, has been a coach of interest the past four times the Kentucky job has opened up. (He was an assistant at UK under Rick Pitino for five seasons.) He was also tied to the opening at North Carolina before former Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone was hired for that position earlier this month.
The most likely scenario here seems to be that Donovan will land another NBA job during this offseason coaching carousel. But if he decides to take a year off, he’ll be the biggest free agent in college basketball coaching searches that could take place next spring.
Donovan, 60, has spent the past 11 years in the NBA and last coached in college during the 2014-15 season, his 19th in charge of the Florida Gators.
