Son of NKU Coach Darrin Horn joining Kentucky Wildcats as walk-on basketball player
The son of a college basketball coach and former Lexington high school star is planning to join the Kentucky Wildcats as a walk-on player for the 2022-23 season.
Walker Horn, son of Northern Kentucky head coach Darrin Horn, will be the latest high school basketball player to join the UK roster this offseason. He’ll come to the program as part of a 2022 class that features McDonald’s All-American prospects Chris Livingston and Cason Wallace, as well as late-blooming Pittsburgh guard Adou Thiero, who signed with the Wildcats as a scholarship player last month.
247Sports analyst Travis Branham was first to report the addition of Horn, and the Herald-Leader confirmed that he will indeed be joining the Kentucky basketball team.
Horn’s father was a star player for Tates Creek High School, leading the Commodores to the 1991 Sweet Sixteen title game before playing four seasons at Western Kentucky. He was then an assistant coach at WKU, Morehead State and Marquette before returning to Bowling Green as the head coach of the Hilltoppers from 2003-08. He was later the head coach at South Carolina for four seasons and spent four years as an assistant at Texas before returning to the head coaching ranks at NKU in 2019.
Walker Horn played at Covington Catholic for two seasons after the family moved from Texas to Kentucky, but the 6-foot-3 guard returned to the Austin area to play his senior year of high school ball.
The players on the 2022-23 Kentucky basketball team are scheduled to arrive in Lexington for classes and summer workouts later this week, and UK should have an official announcement regarding Horn’s addition to the program soon.
Another walk-on
Also expected to join the Kentucky basketball team for next season will be Grant Darbyshire, who just wrapped up his senior year at Sycamore High School in Cincinnati.
Darbyshire — a 6-2 guard — averaged 2.5 points in 11.9 minutes per game and will also be joining the UK roster as a walk-on player. Along with Darbyshire and Horn, previous Kentucky walk-ons Brennan Canada and Kareem Watkins are expected to return to the Wildcats for the 2022-23 season.
The Cats are expected to have 10 scholarship players for next season, with freshmen Livingston, Wallace and Thiero joining Illinois State transfer Antonio Reeves and returning players Oscar Tshiebwe, Sahvir Wheeler, Jacob Toppin, Daimion Collins, Lance Ware and CJ Fredrick, who missed last season due to injury.
Toppin is still testing the NBA Draft waters but expected to announce in the next couple of days that he will return to UK for a third season.
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 2:17 PM.
