An unlikely team has become UK men’s basketball’s most-common ‘trading partner’
Traveling from the University of Kentucky in Lexington to the University of Washington in Seattle is a one-way trip of 2,438 miles.
In men’s basketball, the Wildcats and Huskies have scant competitive history, having met on the court only twice.
In spite of those realities, the men’s hoops programs at UK and “UDub” have developed an unlikely link. Starting with Mark Pope in 1993, Kentucky has swapped more scholarship men’s basketball players via transfer with Washington, both incoming and outgoing, than any other program.
The current UK head coach, Pope transferred to Kentucky as a player during the Rick Pitino coaching era after playing his first two college seasons for Washington.
On Pope’s 2026-27 UK roster, the Cats will feature not one but two ex-Huskies. Former Washington backcourt starter Zoom Diallo is projected to be Kentucky’s lead guard in the coming season.
Meanwhile, ex-UW center Frank Kepnang is expected to provide physicality and rim protection as a backup center behind incumbent UK starter Malachi Moreno.
From Pope in 1993 through Diallo and Kepnang using the transfer portal to come east this year, no school has sent more transfer men’s basketball players to Kentucky than Washington’s three.
Only West Virginia (Oscar Tshiebwe, Tre Mitchell and Kerr Kriisa) has matched Washington in supplying transfer players to Kentucky since 1993.
Unlike with West Virginia, however, the transferring dynamic between Kentucky and Washington has been reciprocal.
Since 1993, no school has received more transfer, scholarship men’s basketball players from UK than has Washington.
Quade Green left Lexington for Seattle in 2019. Three years later, Keion Brooks made the same journey. One year after that, Sahvir Wheeler went from being a Wildcat to a Huskie.
Only Arkansas (Adou Thiero, D.J. Wagner, Zvonimir Ivisic) has matched Washington in the number of scholarship players attracted from Kentucky via the transfer portal since 1993 — and those three transfers happened in the same year (2024) after the Razorbacks hired UK head coach John Calipari.
On the court, the shared history between Kentucky and Washington is a mere two games.
In what turned out to be Joe B. Hall’s final NCAA Tournament as top Cat, the No. 12-seed Cats upset No. 5-seed Washington 66-58 in the 1985 round of 64.
The 2010-11 Wildcats, who would go on to become Calipari’s first NCAA tourney Final Four team at Kentucky, beat the Huskies 74-67 in the Maui Classic semifinals.
Looking for something different
After Washington went a combined 29-35 over the previous two seasons, Diallo told reporters in Lexington last month that his motivation in picking UK “was just winning. I’m gonna be honest: I know Kentucky basketball, the standard there is, there’s no losing. They can’t afford to lose.
“I felt like if I have my name as part of Kentucky basketball and I win and give us team success, there’s a bunch of opportunities that can not only help myself, but help my team. And I wanted to embrace that.”
Diallo’s new head coach would understand that thought process. In Pope’s two seasons (1991-92 and 1992-93) playing under ex-UK assistant Lynn Nance for Washington, he averaged 11.2 points and 8.1 rebounds, but his teams went a combined 25-31.
For his two seasons playing under Pitino at UK (1994-95 and 1995-96), Pope’s individual numbers went down, as he averaged 7.9 points and 5.7 boards. But his two Wildcat teams went a combined 62-7 and won the 1996 NCAA title.
Conversely, Green — who is back in Lexington this week to play with the UK-affiliated alumni team La Familia in the 2026 TBT — averaged nine points and 2.6 assists in 43 games at Kentucky. The two teams he played on (2017-18 and 2018-19, though he transferred midseason in his second year) went a combined 56-18.
In 40 career games for Washington, Green’s individual numbers blossomed. He averaged 14 points and 4.2 assists — but his teams (2019-20 and 2020-21) went a combined 20-38.
It was the same story for Brooks and Wheeler after they left Kentucky for Washington.
In 80 games at Kentucky, Brooks averaged 8.3 points and 4.4 rebounds. Even including UK’s 9-16 implosion in 2020-21, the three Wildcats teams upon which Brooks played (2019 through 2022) went 60-30.
For his 62 games at Washington from 2022 through 2024, Brooks averaged a robust 19.4 points and 6.8 boards. Yet his teams went 33-31.
Over Wheeler’s two seasons (2021 through 2023) at Kentucky after transferring from Georgia, he averaged 9.1 points and 6.3 assists in 43 games. He played on UK teams that went 48-20.
For the 31 games Wheeler played for Washington in 2023-24, he averaged 14.3 points and 6.1 assists, but the Huskies went 17-15.
Given the distance between the schools and how rarely they have ever played in men’s basketball, who would have ever guessed that Kentucky and Washington would have had so much recent activity as “trading partners?”
