And I’m not sure you can keep them all happy dividing playing time. You can have too many bodies.
2026 Class Not Done?
- Thread starter chroix
- Start date
I feel the same way. Pope gets smashed as a bad coach, but I personally think thats not true at all. I watch the games too. We played the hardest schedule any Kentucky team has ever faced last season and had a roster depleted by injuries and a quitter. The quitter may be on Pope, not having a PG after Lowe went down is on him too, but thats roster building, not floor coaching. We were not as good as a large portion of the schedule, plain and simple. I believe if this team is healthy, UK will have a great seasonMan you just got me smiling.I didn’t love the way Mark subbed the guys last season at all to be honest, not because the other guys were bad, but because the guys he was taking out were playing well most of the time. that 15 team with all that Pro talent was perfectly done and you could bring anyone of them in anytime and not lose anything. I really love our overall talent this season for sure, I don’t think Mark will change his subbing pattern but this team may have the right amount of talent to keep the hammer down. Can’t wait to see these guys.
17 year old so would have to play 2 seasons, very nice
Did you happen to see all the other games in 2025-2026 he’s played that your “site” you picked to reference doesn’t show. Or the fact he’s a SG not a forward. I’m done arguing because clearly you have no clue what you are talking about and I can only assume with your incoherent babble you’ve hit the bourbon already. Good day sir.
And it never ocurred to your genius @SS there may have been a reason he was never used more than about six minutes a game in any of his Euro leagues games last year...
That was what he PLAYED, Einstein. But he wasn’t good enough to be used in the Euro league as a shooting guard. He hit a growth spurt around age 16 though, and then was good enough to be used situationally as a non-shooting forward and also some daft boards projected probably eventually his erstwhile okay shooting would eventually catch up to his body and after that, with his handling, he’d be a pretty good total package so they projected him high.
“Do some research.”
15 spots and 14 committed. A year of playing a year against Big Frank will make him stronger, smarter, and a NBA player. Plus it sits UK in tight with Euro players. No downside if he comes.
Apparently so. Unbelievable the money theyre spending
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by needing the team to shoot better than they ever have. The entire roster we have this year shot 38% last season. That would have been in the top ten in the country. Our offense is going to be prolific — there’s not a doubt in my mind. We are absolutely a question mark on defense the way I see things. We have a lot of guys with length and you hope we can be good enough on that end of the ball. If we can guard, we can be a very good team. Big “if” though.
38% is a perfectly meaningless number if you’re getting that by averaging everybody’s numbers with Momcilovic’s. Of course that result will be high but it means nothIng in the real world. When we can put different people at multiple places on the court at the same time and they all individually have to be guarded a certain way because they individually shoot so well from outside that they each hit at least over a third of their perimeter shots even when they’re guarded, then that means you can’t possibly afford to leave any of them unguarded. In turn, the fact of guarding them, especially when they’re in the sets we like to run, stretches your defense into a shape that makes our offense possible. If we can’t stretch an opposing defense into that shape, our offense is not possible. It’s not rocket science and it has nothing to do with some arbitrarily high number that you can get on paper by averaging everybody’s perimeter shooting percentages in with Momcilovic’s which are plenty high but which we can only ever use through one guy and he can only ever be in one place at a time and opposing defenses can absolutely gameplan to make that meaningless, exactly like we very famously did with David Robinson and more recently did with Nate Ament. Aside from Momcilovic himself we currently have only one guy on the entire roster who has demonstrated he can consistently hit at least a third of his outside shots against division 1 competition (or Euro league competition) and he’s not projected to be a starter. And no amount of hand waving will change that. We need another guard. Not a guy who used to play shooting guard until he hit a growth spurt at age sixteen and after that was good enough to play spot minutes as a forward in Euro league action because he could still handle even though he had lost his ability to shoot from range. An actual guard. Or have fun repeating last year. Unless, as I keep saying, guys we already have mysteriously make big jumps against harder competition, but betting our whole season on that happening is not a smart money move. The smart money move is recruit a sharpshooting guard for the last spot, since our whole season will depend on whether we can somehow come up with one more sharpshooting guard than what we know we have so far, and we’re plenty full up on big men.
I think we will be more than fine shooting the ball. Open three point shots are open threes. It’s a part of the game that can easily translate across levels, if they are open looks. Momcilovic’s gravity will help get more of the clean catch and shoot looks for guys like Wilkins and Diallo, who despite the poor efficiency shooting numbers shot pretty good (35%+) on catch and shoot. Diallo isn’t a shooter and won’t shoot high volume but will make enough. McBride made 40% on 3+ attempts per game and Kam Williams made 36% at Kentucky last year on a team with bad spacing. Morton hit 38.8%. Noah hit 33.3% himself and Hawthorne is expected to be a more than capable shooter.
As long as you can make enough to keep defenses out there on you, I’m fine. And I think we have no one you’ll be able to just fully help off of. That’s why I’d be good with adding a complementary piece who isn’t a great shooter. And yes, it’s 38 percent if you combine every player from last year including Mom. Can’t think of a good reason to remove his numbers since he is part of the equation next year.
I support Pope’s decision. Don’t think it’s a big deal either way, luxury addition.
Open threes are open threes but they don't magically come from nowhere AND in our offense they only come from specific causes AND we're not currently staffed to create those causes. It's okay if you can't understand that. I'm not here to make you understand anything and "I don't think / I think / I don't understand" are not reasonable rebuttals to anything I wrote.
Ky has two guards that are creators in the backcourt this factor alone will create higher percentage shots. Which usually translates to a higher team percentage in shooting the basketball 
As long as **** for brains is your mantra no one reads what SFB has to say.
17 years old, millionaire, 20,000 girls 1/4 mile from the Wildcat Lodge and you think he won’t be happy. Is this a joke?
Thats any campus in big time basketball. Only difference is the chicks wear bikinis to class in Florida
Pitino called it the mother in law defense his early years at UK. Total and constant harassment.
Future pro dribble,pass and shoot with that size no brainer. He's not finished growing yet the skys the limit. Great skill level at a very young age.
I'm not so sure. It will all depend on whether or not he can defend the perimeter.
If he can, I could see him playing some serious minutes at the 2/3 spots for Pope. I still have yet to be convinced that Kam is a 25 minute/game guy. Still looks like a spot-up shooting role player to me.
2 factors to that in regard to how he would translate to the college game:
Is the shooting going to advance quickly? And he's very thin right now, so would he get bullied and struggle with the physicality?
He's going to be in the NBA by the time he's 20, because the talent is pretty obvious. But will he be a good college player at 18?
It's easy to confuse this stuff, but Kusturica averaged 2.6 PPG in the Liga ACB and Boumtje didn't even play. N'Diaye, meanwhile, got 10.3 PPG in the Italian Lega.
Ruzic, who we recruited and went to LSU, put up 6.1 PPG in the Liga ACB and Juan Fernandez, committed to South Carolina, put up 7.8 PPG in the ACB. Gonzaga also got a guy that averaged 5.4 PPG.
These are in line with Dame Sarr, who had 5.8 PPG in the Spanish Liga ACB last year and then got 6.4 PPG as a starter at Duke.
All this is to say that Kusturica will be more like Boumtje (Duke), Sayon Keita (UNC), and Butajevas (Florida). These are younger NextGen players that are likely more of an end-of-the-rotation player for 26/27.
I think he goes to Gonzaga as their only competition for starter minutes is Isaiah Harwell, a transfer from Houston.
Anyone thinking this kid comes in and starts ahead of a Wilkins is crazy. He will take time and might need 2 years before making a big impact. He’s young and not ready. Just because he’s projected in a few years as a high pick don’t mean he’s ready now. Especially in the SEC with the athleticism and physicality.
It’s not a joke. He can have all the same perks at a place where he gets plenty of playing time. These players who are tracking towards the NBA want and believe they deserve playing time. They can quickly turn into that cancer in the locker room if they don’t get it, regardless of the available girls.
I like Kam quite a bit. Did you know we were 8-1 last year when he played 20 or more minutes? Home meltdown vs. Missouri was the only loss.
I see him as a Darius Miller type.
Miller is a very good comparison. I’m stealing it and claiming I said it first
Can’t imagine it would. You have to play two wings in the starting lineup and you can play three of them if you need to.
Can definitely see that argument, but seems like a lot of those international guys don’t really end up on the same college teams as their overseas teammates (Duke and UNC have FC Barcelona kids, KK megabasket (Jelavic) had like 5 guys go to different colleges)) could definitely see a lot of them wanting to go a separate route
For sure. Just gives a leg up on negotiations. Sounds like it’s Gonzaga then Unc as top 2. Arizona in there too. But he won’t be someone you would want to count on day 1.