Reed Sheppard named SEC Freshman of the Year. Reeves, Dillingham and Wagner honored, too.

With the SEC Tournament set to begin Wednesday, the league announced its award recipients for the 2023-24 men’s basketball season Monday afternoon, and there were plenty of Kentucky Wildcats among those honored.

UK senior guard Antonio Reeves was named a first-team All-SEC member. Freshman guards Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard were both named second-team all-league selections, while Sheppard earned SEC Freshman of the Year honors and Dillingham picked up the SEC Sixth Man of the Year Award.

Dillingham, Sheppard and D.J. Wagner were also named to the SEC All-Freshman Team.

The honors were voted on by the league’s coaches.

Sheppard is top freshman

The SEC Freshman of the Year Award was first given out by the coaches in 2001, and Reed Sheppard is the 11th Kentucky player — and 10th during John Calipari’s tenure as head coach — to win it. (Patrick Patterson was the only pre-Calipari freshman to earn the award.)

Sheppard is also the first UK player since Keldon Johnson in 2019 to receive the honor. And the 6-foot-3 guard is the first Kentucky native to be named the SEC’s top freshman. Sheppard won the state’s Mr. Basketball award last year following a stellar career at North Laurel High School.

He led the SEC by shooting 52.6% from 3-point range and was also the league leader with 2.6 steals per game. Sheppard averaged 12.7 points and was third in the conference with 4.5 assists per game.

Sheppard was named the SEC’s freshman of the week for the fourth time this season earlier Monday following a week in which he helped lead UK to wins over Vanderbilt and No. 4 Tennessee, scoring 27 points and making 7 of 10 3-pointers in the latter game.

Widely projected as an NBA lottery pick in this year’s draft, Sheppard joins Reeves as the only Kentucky players to appear in all 31 games so far this season, and he is third on the team — behind Reeves and Tre Mitchell — with 28.9 minutes per game.

The SEC All-Freshman team consists of Sheppard, Rob Dillingham and D.J. Wagner from Kentucky, along with Auburn’s Aden Holloway, Florida’s Alex Condon, Georgia’s Silas Demary Jr., Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard and South Carolina’s Collin Murray-Boyles.

Reeves is first-team All-SEC

Kentucky’s top All-American candidate — senior guard Antonio Reeves — was one of eight players named to the first-team All-SEC list Monday.

Reeves goes into the SEC Tournament at No. 3 in the league in scoring with 20.2 points per game, which would be the highest average by a UK player in the Calipari era. (Jamal Murray, who scored 20.0 points per game in 2015-16, currently holds that mark.)

The Chicago native also shot 50.7% from the field, 44.0% from 3-point range and 88.0% on free throws during the regular season. He averaged 4.3 rebounds in a team-high 31.8 minutes per game.

Reeves scored 27 points in Saturday’s win at Tennessee, his seventh consecutive game with at least 20 points. He’s achieved that mark 19 times so far this season.

Joining Reeves on the first-team All-SEC list were Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht and Zakai Zeigler, Alabama’s Mark Sears, Auburn’s Johni Broome, Florida’s Zyon Pullin, Mississippi State’s Tolu Smith III and Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor IV.

Knecht, a fifth-year college basketball player and the league’s leading scorer with 21.4 points per game, was named the SEC Player of the Year in his first and only season with Tennessee, which won the outright league title with a 14-4 record in the conference.

The second-team All-SEC list features Kentucky’s Sheppard and Dillingham, along with Auburn’s Jaylin Williams, Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr., Ole Miss’ Matthew Murrell, Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard, South Carolina’s Ta’Lon Cooper and Meechie Johnson, and Tennessee’s Jonas Aidoo.

Dillingham is SEC’s top reserve

Freshman guard Rob Dillingham — the Cats’ top NBA Draft prospect and one of the most electrifying players in college basketball — was named the SEC Sixth Man of the Year.

The 6-3 guard from Hickory, North Carolina, is the fifth Kentucky player to receive the award, which was first issued by league coaches in 2004. Other winners from UK include Darius Miller, Kyle Wiltjer, Devin Booker and, just last year, Antonio Reeves.

Dillingham is second on the team (behind Reeves) with 15.0 points per game. He’s made just one start in 30 appearances and is averaging 22.9 minutes per game, adding 3.8 assists per game and shooting 44.5% from 3-point range.

ESPN updated its projections for the 2024 NBA draft last week, and Dillingham was ranked at No. 3 overall and the top college basketball player on the list. (Sheppard was No. 5 in those rankings.)

Other awards handed out by the SEC coaches Monday afternoon included:

▪ Coach of the Year: Lamont Paris, South Carolina.

▪ Scholar-Athlete of the Year: Sean East II, Missouri.

▪ Defensive Player of the Year: Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee.

Joining Zeigler on the SEC All-Defensive Team were Auburn’s Johni Broome, Mississippi State’s Cameron Matthews, Tennessee’s Jonas Aidoo and Texas A&M’s Andersson Garcia.

Kentucky will begin its SEC Tournament journey at 7 p.m. Friday in Nashville against the winner of the previous night’s game between Texas A&M and Ole Miss.

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