Could Milan Momcilovic be the greatest 3-point shooter in UK basketball history?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Momcilovic made 136 three-pointers in 2025-26 and shot 48.7% from deep.
- No UK player has matched 136 makes with a 48.7% season in school history.
- Momcilovic appears to be a strong fit for Pope’s offensive approach.
The day before Iowa State eliminated Kentucky from the NCAA Tournament back in March, the Cats’ head coach was asked how his team might be able to limit Milan Momcilovic, who had established himself as the best 3-point shooter in college basketball.
Mark Pope didn’t try to downplay the assignment, coming up with an adjective befitting Momcilovic’s season to that point.
“He’s put up staggering numbers,” Pope said to begin his reply.
The UK coach then dived into the “really, really impressive” statistics that had defined Momcilovic’s junior year with the Cyclones and caused headaches for opponents on a nightly basis.
Pope spoke of the 6-foot-8 forward’s ability to create open 3-point looks for himself in a variety of ways. Momcilovic was elite in earning shots as a screener and relocator, Pope explained. He was elite in getting 3-pointers off offensive rebounds. And cuts. And trailing the play in transition.
Momcilovic, the opposing coach made clear, was simply elite from the perimeter, and it was going to take a collective effort by his Cats to limit that production.
The next day, Momcilovic dropped 20 points on Kentucky and shot 4 for 9 from 3-point range. Iowa State beat the Cats 82-63 in a game that felt even more lopsided by the end, but Kentucky controlled almost the entire first half. In fact, UK appeared well on its way to an upset victory.
One play from Momcilovic turned the tide.
With the Cats leading 30-23 and a little more than 90 seconds left in the first half, Momcilovic made a creative move to get a midrange look. He missed the shot, but he stuck with it as Kentucky’s players tried and failed to come up with the defensive rebound.
The ball eventually worked its way back into the hands of Momcilovic, who deftly regained possession, shuffled back toward the 3-point line, gathered himself, stayed inbounds, set his feet and calmly nailed a shot from near the corner to cut Kentucky’s lead to four points.
The play totally shifted the momentum, which swung Iowa State’s way for those final 90 seconds. Instead of going into halftime with a nearly double-digit lead, Kentucky found itself down 31-30 at the break, the Cats on the court looking dumbfounded after the blitz that began with Momcilovic’s second-chance play.
Momcilovic was a problem for Pope and the Cats that day. Several weeks later, he turned into the solution for a Kentucky basketball offseason that wasn’t living up to expectations.
With his commitment to UK on Monday night, Momcilovic turned those expectations around and single-handedly pulled a 180 on the optics around Pope’s roster-building efforts for next season.
The offensive-minded UK coach will now have the best 3-point shooter in college basketball at his disposal. And while he hasn’t yet attempted a shot as a Wildcat, it’s no stretch to project that Momcilovic could go down as the greatest 3-point shooter in Kentucky basketball history.
Kentucky’s best 3-point shooter?
The final numbers behind Momcilovic’s 3-point barrage at Iowa State last season: 136 makes from the perimeter with a hit rate of 48.7%. Both of those stats topped all of college basketball.
A look through the Kentucky record books shows nothing that even comes close.
UK basketball has been closely linked to the 3-point shot almost since its inception. It was universally adopted in college basketball beginning with the 1986-87 season, and Rick Pitino saw little choice but to lean heavily into a perimeter approach three years later, unleashing “Pitino’s Bombinos” on college basketball in his first season in Lexington, a unique 3-point-heavy strategy to give an oft-overmatched roster a chance to compete with more talented opponents.
Pitino continued to give the green light to star shooters in the years that followed. Tubby Smith, Billy Gillispie and John Calipari all had elite perimeter players in the seasons that followed that.
None of them approached Momcilovic’s accomplishments last season at Iowa State.
Jodie Meeks’ junior year at UK remains the stuff of legend nearly two decades later. His total of 117 3-pointers that season also remains the school record. But that tally is still 19 shy of Momcilovic’s 2025-26 output. And Meeks’ 40.6% hit rate doesn’t come close to matching Momcilovic’s 48.7% showing.
Only three other Cats — Jamal Murray, Malik Monk and Travis Ford — have ever made 100 3s in a single season. Murray (40.8%) and Monk (39.7%) had accuracy to go with the volume, but each fell well short of Momcilovic in both categories.
Only five Kentucky players have ever shot better than 45% from deep in a single season. None of those players attempted 200 shots from the perimeter. Momcilovic took 279 last season.
Ford shot 52.9% from deep during the 1992-93 season, with fellow floor-spacers like Jamal Mashburn and Dale Brown alongside him. Ford’s showing is arguably the best 3-point shooting season in program history. Only Cameron Mills has shot at a higher percentage, hitting a school-record 53.2% of his 3-pointers in 1996-97, but Ford had made (and attempted) more than twice Mills’ number four years earlier.
Still, Ford made only (relatively speaking) 101 3s that season. Momcilovic made 136 last season. That’s a difference of 105 points from the perimeter.
A handful of other memorable 3-point shooting seasons by Kentucky players:
- Reed Sheppard joins Mills and Ford as the only UK players to hit better than Momcilovic’s 48.7% rate in a season. Sheppard shot 52.1% from deep in his only year as a Wildcat, making 75 3s that season. That’s 61 fewer than Momcilovic’s 2025-26 output.
- Doron Lamb was perhaps the deadliest shooter of the Calipari era. He shot 48.6% as a freshman and 46.6% as a sophomore. But his total number of makes as a Wildcat was 144 3s, just eight more than Momcilovic managed in one season alone.
- Tony Delk holds the all-time UK record with 283 3-pointers over his four years. As great as he was, Delk never made more than 95 3s in a single season and never shot better than 44.3%.
- Keith Bogans is No. 2 on that career list, but his single-season highs were 80 makes and a 38.3% hit rate. Tayshaun Prince is No. 3 on UK’s all-time list. Prince never made more than 65 3s in a single season and never shot better than 35.8%.
- Koby Brea leads the Pope era so far with 93 3s (tied for seventh in school history) and a 43.5% hit rate (14th all-time at UK) two seasons ago. Both pale in comparison to Momcilovic’s Iowa State numbers.
Brea was also regarded as the nation’s best 3-point shooter when he transferred to Kentucky, and his ability to space the floor by drawing in defenders opened up opportunities for other Cats, just as Pope hopes Momcilovic’s presence will create better looks for teammates such as Kam Williams, Braydon Hawthorne and Alex Wilkins next season.
Momcilovic also appears to be a perfect fit for Pope’s offensive approach, and while Iowa State tried to find ways to create scoring chances, the Cyclones’ offense wasn’t necessarily built with a player like him in mind.
It’s possible, perhaps likely, that Momcilovic attempts even more 3-pointers at Kentucky next season than he did at Iowa State last season, and if he can come close to that 2025-26 hit rate, he could very well go down as the best perimeter shooter to ever play for the Cats.
The nation’s best 3-point shooter
Not only was Momcilovic the undisputed top 3-point shooter in college basketball last season, there’s a case to be made that his 2025-26 showing was among the best in the sport’s history.
Forty seasons of college basketball have been played since the 3-point shot was universally adopted. In that time, no player has ever shot better than 46% from deep while also hitting Momcilovic’s 136 total.
A look back through those 40 years of stats shows that only 23 players have ever exceeded Momcilovic’s 136 makes in a single season. Of that group, just six achieved it while playing for teams that competed in high-major conferences.
Those players? Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, Duke’s JJ Redick, Georgia Tech’s Dennis Scott, Auburn’s Bryce Brown, Oklahoma State’s Randy Rutherford and Ole Miss’ Marshall Henderson.
Hield and Florida A&M’s Terrence Woods each shot 45.7% from 3-point range in the season in which they eclipsed 136 long-range makes, the closest anyone has come to Momcilovic’s hit rate at such a high volume. Hield earned national player of the year honors that season.
Other memorable names in that group of 23 include Davidson’s Stephen Curry and Oakland’s Jack Gohlke. Curry went on to become the NBA’s all-time leader in 3-pointers. He made a whopping 162 3s as a sophomore, but he shot only 43.9% that season, a career high. Gohlke, who ended UK’s 2023-24 season with a 3-point barrage, led the NCAA with 137 3s that year (one more than Momcilovic) but shot just 37.6% from deep.
Going into that NCAA Tournament game against Iowa State, Pope knew exactly what his Cats would be up against. And he knew how difficult it would be to limit Momcilovic’s production.
“The communication needs to be key,” he said then. “Us being solid in ball protection is going to be key. Us being good on the glass is going to be a key, because he’s so focused on earning 3s off offensive rebounds and off cuts and in transition.”
Long answer short, Momcilovic can make shots from anywhere on the court, at any time, in seemingly any situation.
It was a scary thought for all associated with Kentucky basketball back in March. Moving forward, it could be a recipe for the greatest 3-point shooting season in program history.
