What’s the latest news for Kentucky basketball and the NCAA transfer portal?
A key deadline in the offseason college basketball landscape is fast approaching.
The deadline for college basketball players to enter the NCAA transfer portal is 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Once in the portal, college transfers can make their decisions on where to go at any time. But Tuesday night is the cutoff time for players to enter the portal.
So far, only one player from Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball team is among the more than 2,000 college players who have entered the portal this spring.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been a slow spring for the Wildcats in the portal.
Kentucky is set to welcome five players from the portal for the 2025-26 season. Mouhamed Dioubate (Alabama), Jaland Lowe (Pittsburgh), Jayden Quaintance (Arizona State) and Kam Williams (Tulane) have all already been announced as Wildcats for next season.
A fifth commitment arrived for Pope and UK on Monday afternoon, when former Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen committed to the Cats. This means a defending national champion will be suiting up for Kentucky next season.
In a resulting move following Aberdeen’s commitment to Kentucky, a planned transfer portal visitor is now no longer coming to Lexington this week.
Also on Monday, former UK walk-on Grant Darbyshire entered the transfer portal after spending three seasons as a walk-on with the Wildcats.
Here’s the latest news on Kentucky’s efforts in the portal, as well as some other major storylines that have emerged with the transfer portal as the entry deadline nears.
UK basketball lands Denzel Aberdeen from transfer portal
Let’s start with the big news of the moment.
Kentucky now has a 13th scholarship player in place for the 2025-26 season after Monday’s commitment from Aberdeen, who previously played three seasons at Florida.
Aberdeen played in 39 of Florida’s 40 games last season, making five starts for the eventual national champions. Aberdeen averaged 7.7 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 19.7 minutes per game. He shot 35% from 3-point range, 41.8% from the field and 70.8% from the foul line.
The 6-foot-5 Aberdeen scored seven points for the Gators in their national championship game win over Houston earlier this month.
According to the 247Sports rankings, Aberdeen is the No. 59 available transfer in the portal this offseason. Kentucky now ranks fourth in the country in the 247Sports team transfer rankings.
Kentucky is working with the assumption that there will be 15 scholarships available for the 2025-26 season, an increase that’s expected to result from the House vs. NCAA settlement that could be finalized soon. This means UK would still have two scholarships to use to fill out next season’s team, following the addition of Aberdeen.
Kentucky basketball will no longer host Rylan Griffen for visit
Before Aberdeen committed to the Cats, Kentucky was set to host a former member of another college basketball blue blood for a recruiting visit.
Rylan Griffen — a 6-foot-6 guard who previously played two seasons at Alabama and one season at Kansas — was scheduled to visit Pope’s program on Tuesday.
That will no longer happen, and Griffen is no longer considering Kentucky as his next college stop.
During the 2022-23 season, Griffen came off the bench as a freshman in all 37 of Alabama’s games. He averaged 5.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 15.8 minutes per game for a Crimson Tide squad that was the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, but lost in the Sweet 16 in Louisville to a San Diego State team led by guard Lamont Butler, who just finished his college career at UK.
In the 2023-24 season, Griffen was a regular starter for Alabama as the Crimson Tide reached the Final Four for the first time in school history. Griffen averaged 11.2 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game, while shooting 39.2% on 3-pointers, in his final season playing for Nate Oats.
Griffen then hit the portal last offseason and transferred to Kansas, where he was part of a Jayhawks team that disappointed relative to preseason expectations. Last season, Griffen averaged only 6.3 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 20.2 minutes per game. He made 20 starts and appeared in 33 of Kansas’ 34 games last season.
Griffen’s 3-point shooting dipped down to 33.6% last season. He shot 37.2% from the field at Kansas after shooting 45.4% from the field during his final season at Alabama.
According to the 247Sports transfer portal rankings, Griffen is the No. 73 overall player available in the transfer portal.
PJ Haggerty leads list of recent transfer portal entrants
Kentucky has already completed most of its offseason portal work, but plenty of talented college players are still jumping into the portal as Tuesday’s deadline nears.
In recent days, the following notable college basketball players have entered their names into the portal:
▪ Chad Baker-Mazara (Auburn): One of the players most synonymous with Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers, Baker-Mazara is hitting the transfer portal after two seasons on The Plains. The 6-foot-7 senior swingman averaged 12.3 points per game last season for Auburn, which won the SEC regular season title and reached the Final Four for just the second time in program history.
▪ PJ Haggerty (Memphis): The consensus top player now available in the portal, Haggerty was an All-American and the player of the year in the American Athletic Conference last season. The 6-3 redshirt sophomore guard averaged 21.7 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game for Memphis, and he’s set to command a high-dollar figure from whichever school that lands him.
Haggerty was third in the NCAA in per-game scoring last season.
▪ Andrej Stojakovic (California): This one will be of particular interest to Kentucky fans who recall that Pope and the Wildcats pursued Stojakovic last offseason when he was transferring from Stanford. The 6-7 sophomore guard averaged 17.9 points, 4.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game this past season for Cal.
▪ Simeon Wilcher (St. John’s): A former four-star high school recruit from New Jersey, Wilcher, a 6-4 sophomore guard, started 25 games and averaged 8 points per contest for Rick Pitino’s Red Storm last season. St. John’s won both the Big East regular season and tournament titles.
Of this group, Haggerty is likely to be the one who has the biggest impact on a team’s fortunes in the 2025-26 season. Haggerty is ranked as the No. 2 player in the transfer portal, per 247sports. He’s also a top-15 portal player in college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa’s rankings.
Again, players like these can make their college decisions at any time from the portal.
On Sunday, two players from the portal who had previously been linked to Kentucky made their college choices. Former Robert Morris forward Alvaro Folgueiras — last season’s player of the year in the Horizon League — committed to Iowa. Also, former North Dakota guard Treysen Eaglestaff committed to West Virginia, after previously committing to and decommitting from South Carolina out of the portal.
Auburn, Texas A&M add players from transfer portal
A pair of SEC programs made some very notable gains via the transfer portal in recent days.
First, let’s look at Texas A&M and new Aggies head coach Bucky McMillan. A&M has added former Indiana forward Mackenzie Mgbako, who took a recruiting visit from the transfer portal to Kentucky a few weeks ago. Mgbako averaged 12.2 points per game during both of his seasons at Indiana.
Mgbako is now the second transfer portal add for the Aggies under McMillan’s leadership. A&M has also landed guard Jacari Lane, who averaged 17.3 points per game last season at North Alabama.
Four former Aggies — Pharrel Payne, Solomon Washington, Andre Mills and George Turkson Jr. — have opted to follow former head coach Buzz Williams to his new coaching stop at Maryland.
Elsewhere, Auburn picked up another commitment from a highly rated player making the jump up to the Division I level. The Tigers have a commitment from Elyjah Freeman, a 6-foot-8 wing who averaged 18.9 points and 8.7 rebounds per game last season while playing for Lincoln Memorial, an NCAA Division II school in Harrogate, Tennessee. Freeman shot better than 45% from 3-point range during his lone season at Lincoln Memorial.
Freeman joins Emeka Opurum and Abdul Bashir — both of whom arrive from the junior college ranks — as accomplished players from the lower-levels of college basketball who will be suiting up for Pearl’s team next season.
And while it wasn’t a transfer portal add, some big news in the high school basketball recruiting world took place Sunday night that will benefit an SEC school.
Nate Ament — previously the top uncommitted prospect in the 2025 high school recruiting class — committed to Tennessee on Easter Sunday. Ament picked the Volunteers from a group of finalists that also included Arkansas, Duke, Kentucky and Louisville.
As far as the 2025 high school recruiting class goes, UK’s last remaining target appears to be Braydon Hawthorne, a four-star small forward who was previously signed to play at West Virginia. Hawthorne took a recruiting visit to Kentucky last week.
UK has already signed guard Jasper Johnson and in-state center Malachi Moreno from the high school ranks for next season. The Wildcats also have a commitment from Andrija Jelavic, a soon-to-be 21-year-old big man from Croatia.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
