Named AP Co-Coach of the Year along with Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, St. John’s coach Rick Pitino talked about Kentucky’s Mark Pope during a press conference at the Alamodome in San Antonio on April 4, 2025. By NCAA| John Clay
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With a roster that’s nearly set for the 2025-26 college basketball season and the next group of Kentucky Wildcats just a few weeks away from joining forces in Lexington, what’s the outlook for Mark Pope’s second season in charge of the program?
Good enough that Pope making good on his promise to hang more banners in Rupp Arena during his tenure as UK’s head coach is looking like a legitimate possibility in year two.
“For sure,” Brandon Garrison, the Cats’ returning big man, said this week. “Just seeing the guys that they’re bringing in, I feel like we’ll have a very great chance of chasing that No. 9 and getting further than what we did this past year.”
“No. 9” is, of course, a reference to the Wildcats’ continued quest for a ninth NCAA title. UK hasn’t won it all since 2012, and the Cats haven’t advanced to the Final Four — the requirement for raising a new banner in Rupp — since 2015.
This past season — Pope’s first as Kentucky’s coach — the Wildcats advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 for the first time in six years, a notable achievement in year one of a new era of UK basketball but a little short of that “banner” goal set forth by the program’s new leader.
Garrison and the rest of the returning Wildcats haven’t been the only ones keeping tabs on Pope’s transfer portal efforts and the lofty possibilities that could result from that roster construction.
The national college basketball pundits have taken notice, too.
This past week marked a milestone for the offseason. The transfer portal closed for new entries Tuesday night, the past several days have seen rampant activity with new defections and commitments across the country, and, by all accounts, the Cats came out of the week looking stronger for next season.
The big addition to UK’s 2025-26 roster was former Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen, who played a key role in the Gators’ run to a national championship this month and was projected to start for coach Todd Golden’s team in defense of that title next season.
Aberdeen committed to the Cats on Monday, a move that made waves in national circles.
Field of 68 catapulted Kentucky to No. 3 in its early Top 25 rankings immediately following Aberdeen’s announcement. The Cats have since dropped to No. 4 in those Field of 68 rankings after more additions pushed St. John’s into the No. 3 spot, with Houston and Purdue ranked 1-2.
That’s one group of veteran college basketball observers that has UK as a top four team in America.
247Sports recruiting analyst Travis Branham — a national expert covering the portal and college basketball, at large — posted on X that the addition of Aberdeen gave Kentucky “a Final Four-caliber roster” with “a deeper and more talented squad” than Pope’s first UK team.
Aberdeen joined fellow transfers Jaland Lowe, Kam Williams, Mouhamed Dioubate and Jayden Quaintance in UK’s 2025 portal class. All five of those players are talented enough to start for teams with legitimate national title hopes, something Kentucky can now claim for next season.
And those five won’t be alone, obviously.
Pope is also bringing in three college basketball newcomers: five-star guard Jasper Johnson, McDonald’s All-American post player Malachi Moreno and intriguing, 6-11 Croatian forward Andrija Jelavic.
Joining Garrison in the returnee category will be Collin Chandler and Trent Noah, at the very least. Keeping Garrison, Chandler and Noah out of the transfer portal was a victory for the UK staff.
The Cats did lose Travis Perry to the transfer portal Tuesday night, a surprise departure of a local fan favorite who contributed as a freshman and offered roster continuity moving forward, but not a player expected to have a major impact on the Cats’ 2025-26 season.
Kentucky will now wait for a decision from Otega Oweh — the Cats’ leading scorer this past season — as he goes through the NBA draft process. Oweh is not widely projected to be selected in the 59-pick draft — ESPN had him at No. 77 on its latest Top 100 prospects list Thursday — and he is still expected to return to Lexington for his senior season.
If Oweh does indeed come back, he’d almost certainly be a preseason All-SEC selection and could even be in the discussion for the league’s preseason player of the year.
“Having him definitely changes that dynamic,” Chandler said of adding Oweh to an already talented roster. “We want the best for him, and his dream is to play in the NBA, as all of ours is. And so we hope that opportunity arises for him.
“But if he does decide to come back, I mean, no one’s gonna be complaining,” he continued with a laugh. “O is a great teammate to play with and to grow with. And so, selfishly, I would love to play with O again.”
Kentucky head coach Mark Pope laughs with Wildcats forward Brandon Garrison during an open practice at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis before the team’s game against Tennessee last month.
Kentucky head coach Mark Pope laughs with Wildcats forward Brandon Garrison during an open practice at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis before the team’s game against Tennessee last month. Ryan C. Hermens
Chandler and Garrison both spoke to the Herald-Leader over the past few days, reflecting on their first season at Kentucky and looking ahead to what they believe could be an even more successful run in Pope’s second year at the helm.
Like everyone else, they’ve been watching the portal season unfold, and both returning Cats were happy with what the UK coaching staff has put together for next season.
Garrison grinned at the mention of Quaintance, a projected NBA lottery pick next year. Quaintance is listed at 6-9 and known for his rim-protecting presence. He’s coming off ACL surgery last month — a procedure that raises some questions regarding his availability for the start of the season — but he’s a game-changing talent when healthy.
On paper, Quaintance is likely to battle Garrison for playing time, but the returning UK player said he’d been watching highlights of the newcomer and couldn’t wait to share the court with him. He also said Pope has talked about playing Garrison at the 4 and Quaintance at the 5 in some situations.
“That could be scary,” Garrison said with another smile.
He didn’t need film study to speak on Dioubate, who played the past two years at Alabama and was UK’s foe in three games — all Bama wins — this past season. Garrison raved about Dioubate’s toughness and versatility, predicting that UK’s practice sessions would be much more physical in the paint this coming season. That thought brought another smile to his face.
Chandler, who is back home in Utah preparing for his wedding next month, said he’d also been watching YouTube highlights to get to know his new teammates and sounded eager to get to work later this spring.
That backcourt — with Lowe, Oweh, Chandler and Johnson at the traditional guard spots and Williams and Noah slotted into wing roles — looks formidable.
“Kentucky is absolutely loaded on the perimeter next season,” wrote ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, placing the Cats at No. 10 in the newest Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings on that website.
UK is also sitting at No. 10 in the latest CBS Sports rankings for 2025-26. Other prominent sites have the Cats inside the top 10, too.
Kentucky began last season at No. 23 in the Associated Press rankings and almost immediately vaulted into the top five before injuries started to pile up. The Cats finished No. 12 in the AP rankings despite playing the end of the season short-handed.
With no more major additions expected this spring — pending Oweh’s return — this is looking like the roster that Pope will send out next season. Summer practice will start soon enough.
“I’m excited about all the guys that he’s bringing in. I’m excited to get to know them,” Chandler said. “Coach Pope is very good at finding guys who are good to be around and good teammates to play with. So I would expect nothing less than that of the guys that he’s bringing in. They’re all very solid. We have a bunch of players who have proven themselves and are winners, as we’ve seen.”
The final big addition was Aberdeen, and Chandler specifically mentioned the ex-Florida guard as an important piece to UK’s overall puzzle. This past season, the Cats had Lamont Butler, a veteran guard who became the team’s heart and soul on the court and came to Lexington with substantial NCAA Tournament experience.
Aberdeen spent last season getting to where Chandler and the rest of these Cats want to go next.
“Especially with Denzel coming and having (that experience),” Chandler said. “I felt like last year we had a lot of experience with Lamont in March Madness, and what he had experienced — and he was able to share that with us.
Now that we’ve all played in there — and then Denzel obviously had a great run with Florida this last year — I think that adds a lot of experience to winning on our team that we’re going to need for the culture that we’re setting in Kentucky.”
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