https://kyinsider.com/kentucky-bask...overed-ansley-almonor-transfer-portal-022825/
We are the only major program offers Almonor and he becomes an important piece to us. Pope did an incredible job in finding this guy.
he plucked Ansley Almonor from the bottom of the figurative transfer portal barrel. Coming into the season, he was ranked 345th on On3’s list of players looking for a new home.
“I didn’t know Ansley at all before I was here at Kentucky,” Pope admitted in his presser on Thursday. “We have a bunch of different prongs of our portal attack, and one of them is kind of the Moneyball space of how we run with guys in the portal.“
“You have your Excel spreadsheet with all of the columns of data, and we start to say, ‘Okay, let’s forget the algorithm that puts all that data together and then ranks players, and let’s just only go to like these three data points and throughout all the other data and see who raises to the top of the list if we do that”
Enter: Almonor, a transfer from Farleigh Dickinson, flying well under everyone’s radar.
“His name came up pretty prominently on a list of guys we’re like, what do you think? Is there any way?” Pope said. “And then we started to watch film… He was a good scorer, and he had a creative vibe as a cutter. He had a real sense about, kind of finding open space”
"And clearly we’re attracted to his ability to shoot the ball, and then you hear that he beat Purdue in the first round (of the 2023 NCAA Tournament). And so there’s that little component, like man, he’s played in big games and all that stuff kind of coming together.”
We are the only major program offers Almonor and he becomes an important piece to us. Pope did an incredible job in finding this guy.
he plucked Ansley Almonor from the bottom of the figurative transfer portal barrel. Coming into the season, he was ranked 345th on On3’s list of players looking for a new home.
“I didn’t know Ansley at all before I was here at Kentucky,” Pope admitted in his presser on Thursday. “We have a bunch of different prongs of our portal attack, and one of them is kind of the Moneyball space of how we run with guys in the portal.“
“You have your Excel spreadsheet with all of the columns of data, and we start to say, ‘Okay, let’s forget the algorithm that puts all that data together and then ranks players, and let’s just only go to like these three data points and throughout all the other data and see who raises to the top of the list if we do that”
Enter: Almonor, a transfer from Farleigh Dickinson, flying well under everyone’s radar.
“His name came up pretty prominently on a list of guys we’re like, what do you think? Is there any way?” Pope said. “And then we started to watch film… He was a good scorer, and he had a creative vibe as a cutter. He had a real sense about, kind of finding open space”
"And clearly we’re attracted to his ability to shoot the ball, and then you hear that he beat Purdue in the first round (of the 2023 NCAA Tournament). And so there’s that little component, like man, he’s played in big games and all that stuff kind of coming together.”