EKU landed a transfer guard from Division II. Now he’s among the top scorers in Division I
Of the 127 NCAA Division I men’s college basketball players at Kentucky schools, none are scoring the ball quite like Eastern Kentucky sophomore guard George Kimble III.
A former standout player at Eckerd College — an NCAA Division II school in St. Petersburg, Florida, — Kimble leveled up last offseason by committing to head coach A.W. Hamilton and the Colonels out of the transfer portal.
And after averaging more than 19 points per game as a freshman at Eckerd, Kimble’s scoring ability has traveled with him to Richmond.
The standout sophomore guard is averaging 18.7 points per game this season for EKU, which is now on a four-game winning streak after winning on the road Thursday night at Florida Gulf Coast. Kimble led the Colonels with 23 points in that game, which lifted EKU’s overall record to 13-11 and its Atlantic Sun Conference record to 7-4.
The Colonels are now just one game out of first place in the league standings.
Kimble has had a spectacular scoring season. He’s scored at least 20 points in 11 contests for the Colonels, including a season-best 33 in a double-overtime win at Central Arkansas to kick off ASUN play for EKU on Jan. 2.
After Thursday’s slate of games, Kimble ranked in the top 50 nationally in scoring and was second in the ASUN, behind only Lipscomb senior forward Jacob Ognacevic (19.4 points per game).
Kimble is currently on pace to have the best scoring season by an EKU player since 2019, when Nick Mayo — the all-time leading scorer in EKU men’s basketball history — averaged nearly 24 points per game.
“His growth is to his credit, because of what he puts in,” Hamilton told the Herald-Leader about Kimble. “He watched film with me in the preseason after (every) practice. The 30 practices in 42 days. We watched film every single day together. After every game, I clip up all his clips, good (and) bad decision making, great decisions, bad decisions, every one of them. And we watch them together. He wants to be so good. He’s a student of the game. So it’s pretty special to watch his growth.”
What has allowed Kimble to be such an effective scorer this season at EKU?
His upbringing is a good place to start.
The 6-foot-2 Kimble began playing basketball as a 2-year-old at his local YMCA in Florida, and has consistently played up age levels at his various basketball stops. Whether at the Y, at the local Boys and Girls Club or on the travel basketball circuit, Kimble was matched up against older opponents.
“I used to be the smallest on the court at all times,” Kimble told the Herald-Leader during a wide-ranging interview last month at EKU’s renovated home gym, Alumni Coliseum, in Richmond. “Seeing that I was able to play with them and play alongside them, so I knew I could have a possible future with (basketball) if I just kept working hard. ... Not much room for, like, crying and stuff like that, complaining. You’ve just got to be tough, and you’re gonna get knocked down, but it’s (about) keep getting up.”
Per KenPom, Kimble is a top-25 player in the nation when it comes to the percentage of possessions used. The KenPom definition of this metric — “a measure of personal possessions used while the player is on the court” — has assigned Kimble a 31.7% mark for the season.
Kimble also gets after it on defense.
He leads the Colonels with an average of 2.63 steals per game, a mark that measures up remarkably well nationally (sixth in the country, following Thursday’s games). Kimble is also top 15 in the nation in steal percentage — defined by KenPom as “the percentage of possessions that a player records a steal while he is on the court” — at 4.9%.
This is all particularly pleasing to Hamilton, EKU’s seventh-year head coach who continues to sell his Eastern Kentucky program — which won the ASUN regular season championship last year — with the “Most Exciting 40 Minutes In Sports” tagline.
The scoring and steals will, deservedly, grab the headlines for Kimble, but his individual success this season has also helped steer EKU in the right direction when it comes to the end goal of returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.
“He hasn’t even scratched the surface of how good he can be,” Hamilton said of Kimble. “He’s going to continue to get better and better and better, because he wants to do it.”
George Kimble III breaks out as a scoring star for EKU basketball
When recounting what made Kimble an appealing transfer portal target for the Colonels, Hamilton begins with Kimble’s mentality.
“When you pull up Synergy, you can watch everybody’s makes, misses, what they look like, going left, right. You can get so many details,” said Hamilton, referencing the robust basketball analytics company that offers a detailed video library of players. “But the thing I loved about George is how fearless he played. It fits our style here.”
As a high school prospect, Kimble received interest from several Division I programs, including from ASUN school Jacksonville and South Florida. But Kimble opted to stay close to home and go the Division II route for a season, a choice that ultimately paid off with his transfer up to Division I last year.
First-year EKU assistant coach AJ Clark was previously an assistant coach at Palm Beach Atlantic, which plays in the same conference as Kimble’s former school, Eckerd, in Division II. Clark was able to give Hamilton a first-hand scouting report on Kimble, and this reassured Hamilton that Kimble was the exact kind of player the Colonels needed.
“We knew we needed somebody that could not only play fearless on the offensive end, but could anchor our defense,” Hamilton said.
While authoring a special individual season in Division II — Kimble played 21 games at Eckerd last season and scored 23 or more points in 10 of those contests — he also showed remarkable injury perseverance. He’s broken both of his hands, with the latest one coming during a practice prior to the start of his freshman season at Eckerd in 2023.
Despite his college debut being delayed, Kimble wasted no time displaying his scoring prowess. In his first college game at Eckerd, Kimble came off the bench and scored 27 points in 26 minutes, going 16-of-18 from the free-throw line in the process.
He was a penciled-in starter from that point on.
Injury resilience has also already been a factor for Kimble at EKU. Kimble has rebounded from a broken finger last summer to start all 24 games, so far, for the Colonels this season.
“He just set the tone right away with how hard he was playing on the defensive end, it wasn’t anything about offense,” Hamilton said, detailing the effort plays Kimble made during a closed preseason scrimmage against Bradley.
“Really, just playing with confidence, being willing to take a lot of shots that some people would think are, quote unquote, ‘bad shots.’ But it’s just playing confident,” Kimble added. “Just attacking the basket, and just knowing that I put in a lot of work, so just trust in the work that I put in.”
Kimble’s seemingly seamless fit at EKU has also been aided by playing alongside fifth-year guard Devontae Blanton, a longtime starter who has averaged double-digit scoring in each of the last four seasons for the Colonels.
Kimble specified that learning how to play off two feet instead of one foot is a particular area that Blanton — who is second all-time in scoring in EKU men’s basketball history — has helped him with.
And Hamilton has taken notice.
“(Kimble) is, like, the perfect example of somebody that you would show to say, ‘OK, this is how you do it when you attack the paint,’” Hamilton said. “Watch this guy, George Kimble, playing off two feet over and over and over and over again.”
It helps that Kimble is also a rock-solid free-throw shooter. The sophomore is shooting 85.1% from the foul line this season.
Kimble is also second on EKU with 3.3 assists per game, just behind Blanton’s 4 helpers per contest.
“I think just how hard I play on both ends,” Kimble added about what he thinks has endeared him to Hamilton so quickly. “Whether it’s like my on-ball defense, or just relentless attacking with the ball, getting into the paint and stuff, just being relentless and a hard worker.”
These qualities are also exemplified in a unique way by Kimble off the court. Kimble and his family founded a nonprofit organization called WeSeeU Inc. after a young Kimble took an interest in making sure less fortunate children had toys at Christmastime.
WeSeeU now offers year-round programs that encompass everything from providing backpacks and supplies to students in need, to delivering thank-you notes to first responders. Kimble’s mother, Tanya, is the president of WeSeeU and his father, George, is the vice president.
“It’s just a good feeling to know that you can help people out, because at the end of the day it’s not about you (and) what you’ve got going on,” Kimble said. “It’s good to help everybody, make sure everybody’s good.”
George Kimble III has adapted to NCAA Division I basketball at EKU
Athleticism, basketball intelligence and size were among the major differences Kimble told the Herald-Leader he’d adapted to since leaving Division II for Division I.
“Learning to deal with size and different screen coverages and stuff,” Kimble said. “Just watching film and just playing a bunch of games now, certain stuff I can see on the court, just to prevent from turning the ball over in situations with a bigger player, just getting used to the size and stuff. ... Learning when to attack off the swing, the movement of the ball. Learning how to read ball screens and stuff like that.”
An unorthodox offseason mandate from Hamilton helped fill in the gaps when it came to other important factors that went along with his transfer, like building chemistry and cohesion with his EKU teammates.
In the pursuit of trying to shape Kimble as an “energy giver” on the court, Hamilton told Kimble that he needed to give out at least 250 high-fives a day to his new teammates. Kimble eventually reached that daily benchmark, with the help of some “conditioning motivation” from Hamilton when Kimble fell short.
Among the other strides that Kimble has made since arriving in Richmond? Learning how to be a leader.
“Last year, man, coming here, I wasn’t much of a communicator on the court,” Kimble said. “But, I’ve been working on it, and it’s just getting easier and easier.”
At the heart of things, Kimble is a scorer and showman. There’s a reason he cites Allen Iverson as his favorite basketball player of all time.
“Just his confidence. Just the swag he brought on and off the court. Just being himself,” Kimble said of Iverson, the Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and former NBA MVP. “... He’s like, the smallest guy on the court, and growing up, I was like the smallest guy too. So that’s something I just definitely took from him, and then just the confidence he played with.”
These are the traits Kimble has displayed this season at EKU, and the qualities Hamilton hopes will continue to flourish as the Colonels continue their pursuit of a return to March Madness for the first time in more than a decade.
“He’s on the verge of exploding,” Hamilton said of his burgeoning star guard. “And it’s exciting to watch.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
