Not saying anything negative towards Pope, but things are starting as expected. Bradshaw gone to OSU, Dallin rules out UK, and Wagner enters portal. I'm sure we will get some good news too though.
Not a great start for roster building
- Thread starter silentsaregolden2.0
- Start date
Patience, Pope has this shit.
It's going 100% the way we all thought/knew it would. All of Cal's guys are most likely gone and he will have to recruit the portal hard. We knew this would happen as soon as Cal left regardless of when it is. I'm just glad we have the portal now instead of the old style of rebuilding a roster.
Realistic expectations are that the only player on next years roster with Cals fingerprints on them would be Perry.
He signed his contract yesterday. Patience, grasshopper.
So far absolutely nothing unexpected has happened. Wagner and Bradshaw were always gone and they wouldn’t do well here anyway. Dallin isn’t being recruited by Pope and isn’t anything special anyway.
I'll take Williams over Bradshaw. Hall would have been nice with his familiarity with Pope's offensive sets but still would need a much better PG from the portal ahead of him.
Not going to worry. We will have competitive team next year.
I think it’s going exactly the way every UK fan should have expected. Every single one of Cal’s players enter the draft or transfer, after all, that was every season under Cal anyways. Perry will be the only commit to stick around. We will be looking at 2-4 BYU players transferring here, 3-4 other transfer portal players transferring here, and 2-3 recruits that most won’t think are UK caliber players. Possibly adding the McNeeley IU decommit.
That’s our roster next year, and what every UK fan should have expected when Pope was the hire.
That’s our roster next year, and what every UK fan should have expected when Pope was the hire.
Would like to see a commitment in the next 48 hours.
But again this isn't a race we will get the players who want to be here.
But again this isn't a race we will get the players who want to be here.
Decent player who knows Pope's system while we have a fully bare cupboard? 100% yes!!!
Personally, I wasn't really expecting much at this stage. Pope just now clocked in, and guys will take their time weighing their options.
Maybe he wanted a guarantee starter role and Pope turned him down.
I went into this process assuming we returned nothing at all, completely bare. Anything above that will be a pleasant surprise for me. It was always destined to be this way with the vacuum created by Calipari. He probably didn’t recruit a total of a dozen players in his tenure that wanted to be at Kentucky for Kentucky.
That's like watching bulldozers knock down a burned out house where a new house will be built and saying, as the scorched walls fall, "the new house doesn't look so great."
Nah, guards who shoot ft in 60s ain’t it unless they’re Wayne Turner.
Dallin is Mormon, spent the standard two years on a Mormon mission trip and was never going to leave BYU due to that. Has nothing to do with either recruiting or confidence in Pope.
Bradshaw would not fit at all in Pope’s system.
Wagner might, if his late improved perimeter shooting is sustainable. But he is one datapoint total. And opening up his recruitment is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, one which does not rule out him coming here.
Keep your shirt on.
Bradshaw would not fit at all in Pope’s system.
Wagner might, if his late improved perimeter shooting is sustainable. But he is one datapoint total. And opening up his recruitment is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, one which does not rule out him coming here.
Keep your shirt on.
It’s early, plenty of moves still to be made with this team.
Honestly Pope probably already has a feel of what players he has coming it’s just a matter of getting them here.
Don't know, man, but I'm pretty comfortable with all 3 of those decisions.
If you want to change the culture you usually have to change the roster. These guys were sold on Cal's NBA pitch, not surprised that they don't buy into the win for the front of the jersey
My initial thoughts were that this was gonna take a year or 2 and was just glad we went in a different direction.
Call me crazy but Bradshaw and Wagner can roll on somewhere else...
Maybe Burks, honestly. Could see him returning.
Or WHO it was that replaced Cal. But the system Pope runs requires cerebral types, not just the athletic types. AS others are saying, theses kids came here for Cal as their ticket to the NBA or riches elsewhere. No thinking required.
Agree with these comments from @kywildcatsfannumber1 & @Lempface... Even if Dallin would've only been a depth piece, yes it would be nice having players who know the system as that would help the rest of the team get on track with it sooner.
Not a single one of these things were unexpected to me. Gonna be hard to pull a roster this late.
And, THANKFULLY, unlike Cal, Pope will not take his time sitting around waiting on player decisions.
Exactly. I don't expect a single guy to come in or come back other than Perry. Pope didn't say one word about getting guys to the NBA so there's not a single guy that Cal recruited that we should expect to be here. They don't even care about Cal when it comes down to it. They just care about his NBA connections.
Does Dallin know something about Reed?
As others have said, this is what most people expected. I’m not even counting on Perry until he explicitly states he’s still coming. If any other current players returned I would be very surprised.
They came to play for Cal, the Kentucky brand was just another selling point. Remember this same scenario played out for Memphis when Cal took the UK job. Pope at least has the benefit of the transfer portal now, it’s so much easier to quickly rebuild than it was in the past.
I am curious about who follows Cal to Arkansas and who decides to try things at another place (like Bradshaw). It would be amusing and ideal if none of the Kentucky guys went with him. I don’t really want to root against Z or Wagner etc when Arkansas comes to Rupp so I’m hoping (against logic) that it’s just the incoming freshman that end up razorbacks.
They came to play for Cal, the Kentucky brand was just another selling point. Remember this same scenario played out for Memphis when Cal took the UK job. Pope at least has the benefit of the transfer portal now, it’s so much easier to quickly rebuild than it was in the past.
I am curious about who follows Cal to Arkansas and who decides to try things at another place (like Bradshaw). It would be amusing and ideal if none of the Kentucky guys went with him. I don’t really want to root against Z or Wagner etc when Arkansas comes to Rupp so I’m hoping (against logic) that it’s just the incoming freshman that end up razorbacks.
He shot 28% from 3 and 56% from the line here, averaging 0.3 assists per game in 13 minutes. Not good at any of the things you mentioned, and way too weak. Will become decent in a system better suited to him once he matures. NOT the precedent Pope wanted to set with one of his early gets in any case.
I'm not too worried.. but I was fully aware our recruiting was going to take a hit without Cal. Just as long as we can maintain top25 recruiting classes, keep players around, and hit the transfer portal hard.. we will be fine. But it might take a year. And we also have to remember, that while yesterday's introduction/event was AWESOME for us UK fans.. most of the HS players out there couldn't give two shits. So i don't want that to blindside fans.
I thought Pope was an awful hire when compared to the alternatives. He's here now though so there's nothing that can be done. In less than one year we can look back and realize we should have trusted him or that hiring him was indeed a mistake and horrible decision. The only thing you can do until then is lay back and accept the team and roster the university and coach gives you.
