Amid transfer portal angst, Mark Pope has kept a promise to the BBN
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mark Pope prioritized adding creators to UK’s 2026-27 roster to improve scoring creation.
- Kentucky received transfer commitments from Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins.
- Both played their best late in 2025-26 and each had strong availability records.
If you listened to Mark Pope’s final weekly radio show of the 2025-26 season, you heard the Kentucky men’s basketball coach lay down a marker for UK’s 2026-27 roster construction.
“We are desperate to bring creators here to Kentucky,” Pope told the UK Sports Network’s Tom Leach on March 23. “Creators are people (who) earn shots for teammates and can go earn shots for themselves.
“The best teams are ‘creator-rich.’ Unfortunately for us, due largely to the changes we underwent at the point guard spot, that was a place where we struggled all year long (in 2025-26). So that’s a space where we are going to have a high, high focus as we build this roster for next season.”
During this spring of high Wildcats basketball fans angst, I thought about Pope’s words last week when UK got its first two commitments out of the transfer portal. The pledges came from a pair of lead guards who were recruited to fill the “lack of creating” void that Pope lamented on this past year’s Cats.
Given that both now-former Washington guard Zoom Diallo and now-ex-Furman guard Alex Wilkins have been ball-dominant lead guards, there are those questioning how well they will mesh together.
Without question, they are both very used to having the ball. Last season for Washington, the 6-4, 180-pound Diallo was No. 113 in men’s college basketball in percentage of possessions used. Meanwhile, at Furman the 6-5, 175-pound Wilkins was No. 7 in NCAA Division I in percentage of possessions used (source: Kenpom.com).
While questioning whether Diallo and Wilkins will “fit” together is not unreasonable, there is a lot about the pairing that is intriguing.
Diallo, a junior-to-be, and Wilkins, who will be a sophomore in 2026-27, shared a trait last season that should encourage the Big Blue Nation: Both played their best basketball down the stretch of their seasons.
Over the final five games of Washington’s 2025-26 campaign, including a pair of Big Ten Tournament tilts, Diallo averaged 21.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists and made 50.6% of his field goals.
Those were marked jumps on his season averages of 15.7 points, 3.9 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 48.9% field-goal shooting.
As Furman drove to the championship of the Southern Conference Tournament and then put up a more-than-respectable fight in the NCAA Tournament vs. No. 2 seed Connecticut, Wilkins was terrific.
Over the Paladins’ final five games, Wilkins averaged 20 points, 3.2 assists and made 50.7% of his field-goal tries and 50% (15 of 30) of his 3-point attempts.
Those were improvements over his season averages in points (17.8), field-goal percentage (46%) and 3-point percentage (32.8%) but not assists (4.7).
A product of Mattapan, Massachusetts, Wilkins hit 8 of 15 shots and had 21 points and four assists in the 82-71 March Madness loss to eventual national runner-up UConn.
Both Diallo and Wilkins play downhill. Last season for Washington, Diallo hit 52.7% of his two-point shot tries. Wilkins was even better for Furman, making 55.1% of his two-point field goal attempts.
In its two seasons under Pope, Kentucky has been decimated by injuries to its point guards. UK has lost a combined 63 games to point guard injuries — Kerr Kriisa (27 games) and Lamont Butler (nine) in 2024-25 and Jaland Lowe (27) in 2025-26.
So it should be encouraging that Diallo and Wilkins have a history of durability. In his two seasons at Washington, Diallo, a Tacoma product, played in all 64 of the Huskies’ games.
Meanwhile, Wilkins started all 35 Furman games during his freshman season.
An area of concern with a Diallo-Wilkins backcourt pairing will be 3-point shooting.
Diallo made 31.5% of his trey tries in 2025-26, while Wilkins cashed in 32.8% on 3-point shot attempts.
However, there are reasons to think each might raise his 3-point percentage playing in Pope’s offensive system.
In Butler’s one season playing point guard for Kentucky after exiting San Diego State, he raised his 3-point percentage from 30.2% with the Aztecs as a senior to 39.1% as a UK super-senior.
Though less dramatic, lead guard Denzel Aberdeen made 36.3% of his treys this past season as a senior for Kentucky after making 35% the previous season as a Florida junior.
On paper, a bigger concern about Kentucky’s incoming backcourt is ball security.
Diallo turned the ball over 84 times this past season, in comparison to 147 assists.
Wilkins almost matched his assist total (165) with his turnover tally (138). In a 75-71 overtime loss at East Tennessee State on Feb. 4, Wilkins turned the ball over 11 times.
Still, the biggest question of all is whether two guards used to having the basketball in their hands can thrive by playing together.
In UK basketball lore, there is ample history of point guards playing at the same time and succeeding — think John Wall and Eric Bledsoe; Tyler Ulis and Isaiah Briscoe; and Briscoe and DeAaron Fox.
For 2026-27, Mark Pope is betting that Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins can figure out how to play togerther and will give the Kentucky backcourt the multiple creators the coach has promised.
