For the first time in 15 years, a new era of Kentucky basketball is on the horizon. John Calipari announced his resignation Tuesday — and he’s expected to be officially announced as the new head coach at Arkansas — and UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart is now tasked with finding his replacement. That search is not expected to last long, but it will be at least weeks — and likely months — until the Wildcats’ roster for the 2024-25 season is finalized. Whoever Barnhart hires to become the new men’s basketball coach at Kentucky will almost certainly have to piece together the majority of the next roster from scratch, with most of Calipari’s star-studded recruiting class likely to look elsewhere and the futures of the current Wildcats already in question before his departure. With fifth-year college players Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell on their way out of Lexington after exhausting their NCAA eligibility this past season, 10 current Kentucky scholarship players could still, technically, return to school. Here’s a look at Kentucky’s possibilities for the 2024-25 roster.
The player who will be at the top of just about every Kentucky fan’s mind in the coming weeks, Reed Sheppard has been named the national freshman of the year by several major organizations after a surprising star turn in his first season with his home-state school. Sheppard offered a full-throated defense of Calipari following UK’s upset loss to Oakland in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last month, but his deep and obvious ties to the Wildcats’ program mean that the Hall of Fame coach’s departure is unlikely to negatively affect the 6-foot-3 guard’s decision-making process regarding a possible return to Lexington. That said, it still sounds like Sheppard coming back would be a long shot.
He’s currently projected as a lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft, a status that would guarantee him millions of dollars over the next few seasons and put him a year close to an even-more-lucrative second contract in the league. If Sheppard returns, it would be almost purely out of his love for the UK program and his desire to make a deeper run in the NCAA Tournament in year two. But his draft stock could also drop during a sophomore season in college, and — with the 2024-25 roster in total flux — it won’t be clear for a while whether or not the next Wildcats’ team will be well-positioned to realistically challenge for a Final Four in 2025. ROB DILLINGHAM Freshman guard Rob Dillingham declared for the NBA draft Tuesday afternoon. Dillingham is also projected as an NBA lottery pick, ranked by ESPN as the No. 4 overall prospect this year, the top college basketball player behind only UConn center Donovan Clingan, who helped lead the Huskies to the national title Monday night. Dillingham’s decision to enter the NBA draft was the most obvious of the 10 UK players with remaining eligibility, and he would have put his name in the draft pool and kept it there regardless of who was in charge of the Kentucky program for the 2024-25 season. JUSTIN EDWARDS One of the only Kentucky players to already announce his plans, Justin Edwards revealed last week that he was declaring for the NBA draft. Projected as a possible first-round pick — he’s No. 30 on ESPN’s latest list of the top draft prospects — Edwards did not explicitly say whether he was leaving open the option to return to school in his announcement last week, but he’s widely expected to keep his name in the 2024 draft pool and begin his pro career next season. D.J. WAGNER Until the weekend, there was a real possibility that D.J. Wagner would return to Kentucky for a second season. The chances of that happening are now all but gone. The overriding reason that Wagner — the son of former Memphis star Dajuan Wagner — came to UK in the first place was the presence of Calipari, who coached his father in college and remained close to the family in the more than two decades since that one-and-done season.
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D.J. Wagner is still just 18 years old, and — with an uncertain status for this year’s NBA draft — might have come back to school to further develop his skills during one more season of college basketball. It wouldn’t be a shock if he still followed that college path, going along with Calipari to Arkansas. It would be a shock if he ended up back in Lexington next season. ADOU THIERO Like Wagner, sophomore forward Adou Thiero is the son of a former Calipari player. His father, Almamy Thiero, played for the coach at Memphis, too. Adou Thiero was an under-the-radar high school player from Calipari’s hometown of Pittsburgh, and the pre-existing ties gave Kentucky a leg up on the recruiting competition when Thiero hit a growth spurt and broke out toward the end of his senior year. He emerged in his second season as a key player for the Wildcats, but he was the first to make an announcement regarding his plans this offseason.
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