With John Calipari gone, what will Kentucky’s roster look like for the 2024-25 season?

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.

Reed Sheppard

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. 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.

Less than 48 hours after it was confirmed that Calipari would return to UK, Thiero’s name hit the transfer portal. He later clarified that he was also entering the NBA draft while leaving open the option to return to college, specifically saying that he could be back in Lexington for a third season. Even with Calipari gone, it’s not a total stretch to imagine Thiero back at UK for the 2024-25 campaign, but it would have to be the right fit with the new coach, and dozens of schools have already reached out to the high-upside 19-year-old, so the Wildcats will have an uphill battle to get him back.

Ugonna Onyenso

Other than Thiero, the only sophomore among the 10 players on this list is Ugonna Onyenso, the 19-year-old center from Nigeria who joined UK’s program just before the start of the 2022-23 school year. Onyenso emerged as a defensive stopper for the Wildcats after playing sparingly as a freshman. Before the news of Calipari’s departure, it was presumed behind the scenes that Onyenso would be leaving Kentucky following this season, either for the transfer portal or the NBA draft, where he’s No. 46 on ESPN’s list of the best available prospects, which would put him in the middle of the second round. It would be a surprise to see him back in Lexington next season, no matter who the coach ends up being.

Zvonimir Ivisic

Zvonimir Ivisic, who captured the imagination of UK fans before he even arrived in the United States and then delivered one of the most memorable debuts in Kentucky basketball history, expressed an openness to returning to Lexington after the NCAA Tournament loss to Oakland, and he’s not widely projected as a surefire NBA draft pick this year. (No. 64 on the ESPN list.) If Calipari had stayed, the chances of an Ivisic return would have been greater. With the coach who brought him to college basketball gone, he, too, seems like a long shot to be back. Ivisic has already entered the NBA draft twice and removed his name both times, so if he applies for early entry again this offseason, he will lose the remaining three seasons of college eligibility. He has until April 27 to make that decision.

Aaron Bradshaw

Once viewed as the possible No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 recruiting class, Aaron Bradshaw got off to a late start to his freshman season due to a foot injury and ultimately ended up playing the least of UK’s trio of 7-footers down the stretch. He announced Monday that he was entering both the transfer portal and the NBA draft, and — even if he stays in college basketball — he is not expected to return to Kentucky.

Jordan Burks

A late addition to the Kentucky recruiting class of 2023, Jordan Burks flashed plenty of potential while playing out of position early in his freshman season, but when UK’s trio of 7-footers finally returned to the court, his role was diminished. He is expected to enter his name in the transfer portal and look for a fresh start, though no announcement has been made yet.

Joey Hart

Playing just 10 minutes over seven games this season, freshman guard Joey Hart — another late addition to the 2023 recruiting class — was clearly not viewed by John Calipari to be a serious option for playing time on the 2023-24 squad. He entered the transfer portal Monday.

Kentucky’s recruits

John Calipari had commitments from six recruits for next season, a group that featured four consensus five-star prospects and added up to make the No. 2-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle (behind only Duke’s star-studded incoming class).

Don’t expect this Kentucky class to hold.

Only four of UK’s commitments had already signed with the school: point guards Boogie Fland and Travis Perry, and frontcourt players Jayden Quaintance and Somto Cyril. The other two — shooting guard Billy Richmond and small forward Karter Knox — had made non-binding verbal commitments but wouldn’t have been eligible to officially sign with the Cats until next week.

That distinction doesn’t really matter, however, as it’s common practice for a school to let incoming recruits out of their national letters of intent in the event of a coaching change. (And Kentucky has allowed prospects to back out of such binding commitments in recent years with a simple request.) So, who stays? Most likely, not very many of these players.

Perry is a Lyon County native, Kentucky’s all-time high school scoring leader, the state’s reigning Mr. Basketball and a newly crowned Sweet Sixteen champion. Though he and his family have had high praise for Calipari in the past, he almost certainly would have ended up at UK no matter who was coaching the team, and he’s expected to remain with the program.

After that, it gets iffy.

Knox has already backed off his commitment, doing so once it became clear that Calipari would not be in Lexington for the 2024-25 season.

Quaintance is the Cats’ top-rated recruit — No. 8 in the 247Sports rankings — and he’s a unique case in that he won’t be eligible for the NBA draft until 2026 due to his age, meaning he could be a two-year Kentucky player with one-and-done talent. There has been some positive buzz already this week regarding the possibility of Quaintance sticking with the program, but his father posted on X his full support for Calipari in the aftermath of the Oakland loss, amid speculation that the coach’s job might be in jeopardy.

“We def riding with the big dog until the wheels fall off,” Haminn Quaintance said in the post last month, three days before Mitch Barnhart confirmed that Calipari would be back for a 16th season. It’s possible he could stick with the Cats, though he could easily follow Calipari to Arkansas or go elsewhere. Missouri was the second choice when he committed to the Cats.

The other players in UK’s class are more likely to look at other options this spring.

Richmond is the son of another former Calipari player, and that family tie led him to join Kentucky’s class. A new coach might have a shot at holding onto Fland and/or Cyril, but it shouldn’t be considered likely that either of those players will end up in Lexington.

So who’s left at UK?

Where does that leave Kentucky? With very few players for the 2024-25 season.

Travis Perry seems the surest one to remain with the program through this transition, and while keeping Jayden Quaintance in the fold and coaxing a couple of current players back to campus would be a terrific start for the next head coach, it’s just as likely — perhaps more likely — that Perry could end up being the only holdover from the previously projected 2024-25 roster.

Obviously, that would leave the new guy in a real bind.

The good news for Kentucky is that the transfer portal will make it a lot easier to build a team from scratch than would have been possible even a couple of years ago. And the transfer process would also make it simpler for the new coach — assuming it’s someone already in college basketball — to bring some talented players from his former school along with him.

For example, take Baylor’s Scott Drew, the candidate at the top of many of the Kentucky coaching hot boards.

Baylor has the nation’s No. 6 recruiting class, so — in the event that he is hired at UK — some of those prospects could follow to Lexington, just like some of the Wildcats’ current commitments could go with Calipari to Fayetteville.

Drew has also shown his ability to masterfully maneuver the transfer portal in recent years, and that prowess to identify and successfully recruit older players should only be helped along by the resources available at Kentucky.

Make no mistake, whoever leads the Wildcats’ program into the future will have an opportunity to build a highly competitive roster right off the bat. But it’ll take some deft dealings in the portal and plenty of good luck along the way.

And be prepared to learn lots of new names and faces for the 2024-25 season. But fans of the program that John Calipari has been running for the past 15 years are already used to that.

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