Commentary

On a graduate transfer at Kentucky

The ever-revolving door into and out of the Kentucky men's basketball program has been whirling at a feverish pace this spring.

Now that the NCAA deadline for players to take their names out of the NBA draft has passed, seven Wildcats from last season's 26-11 team with remaining eligibility have hit the exits.

Freshmen standouts Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Kevin Knox are universally projected to be first-round picks in the 2018 NBA draft.

Sophomore forward Wenyen Gabriel, redshirt freshman guard Hamidou Diallo and freshman forward Jarred Vanderbilt are not expected to go in the first round of the draft but all three turned pro anyway.

Redshirt sophomore forward Tai Wynyard -- who played in only eight games last season before getting suspended -- has transferred to Santa Clara. Sophomore center Sacha Killeya-Jones -- who had eight points and six rebounds in Kentucky's NCAA Tournament-opening victory vs. Davidson -- has departed for North Carolina State.

That leaves sophomores-to-be PJ Washington, Quade Green and Nick Richards, plus redshirt freshman Jermarl Baker, as Kentucky's returning scholarship players.

Churning into the Kentucky program is the usual collection of lauded freshmen: Point guard Immanuel Quickley, shooting guard Tyler Herro, swingman Keldon Johnson plus front-court player EJ Montgomery.

For those of you scoring at home, that's only eight scholarship players presently on the 2018-19 UK roster.

To bolster that number, it is widely expected that Georgia high school guard Ashton Hagans, a Wildcats recruiting commit, will "re-classify" from the class of 2019 and come to Kentucky for the coming season.

If reports are accurate, John Calipari and Kentucky are also the favorites to land Reid Travis. The 6-foot-8, 245-pound front-court player is using the graduate-transfer rule to leave Stanford after finishing third in the Pac-12 last season in both scoring (19.5 ppg) and rebounding (8.7 rpg).

A Minneapolis native, Travis played in the 2014 McDonald's All-American Game that also included Kentucky signees Devin Booker, Trey Lyles, Karl-Anthony Towns and Tyler Ulis.

What makes Kentucky's apparent strong standing with Travis fascinating is how outspoken in criticizing the graduate-transfer rule Calipari has previously been.

The rule allows players who have earned an undergraduate degree and who have remaining athletics eligibility to switch schools and play immediately rather than sitting out for one season as is conventional.

In March 2016, after Drexel fired ex-Calipari assistant Bruiser Flint as its head coach following a 6-25 season, the Kentucky coach left a phone message for a Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter decrying the impact that Dragons star forward Damion Lee's graduate transfer to Louisville had on Flint's fate.

"It's just bad for the business, bad for kids," Calipari said of the graduate-transfer rule. "It's another thing the NCAA will say whatever they want to say. It's not good for the game. It's not good for these kids. And it caught Bru."

Since Calipari came to Kentucky in 2009-10, the program has previously utilized the grad-transfer rule only once.

In 2012-13, Julius Mays came to Kentucky as a graduate transfer from Wright State. The 6-foot-2 Mays averaged 9.3 points and 2.9 rebounds for Kentucky.

In his remarks to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Calipari appeared to allude to the decision to take a player away from Wright State when he said, "Even then, I was like, 'It disgusts me that we're doing this.' "

Once you've taken such a hard line against graduate transfers, what do you say now to justify taking one?

If Kentucky can fend off defending national champion Villanova for Travis, Calipari could say his prior remarks about the graduate-transfer rule came from emotion and out of loyalty to a coaching friend who had been hurt by the rule.

Calipari could acknowledge that a rule that rewards players for academic success by giving them a chance to finish their college careers in what they perceive as a better situation is a "players first" regulation by the NCAA -- even if it does sometimes hurt mid-major coaches and programs.

Alas, admitting he was wrong -- and he was -- is not the approach I would anticipate Calipari taking.

Instead, if UK gets Reid Travis, I would expect Calipari to note he started his college head coaching career at Massachusetts and to emphasize that his objection to the graduate-transfer rule is seeing power-five schools systematically raid the rosters of teams from less prominent leagues for reinforcements.

A player leaving a Pac-12 school for the SEC would not be an example of that.

Pointing that out is how I would expect Calipari to work out of the "graduate-transfer hypocrisy box" his prior remarks on the topic have created.

Sports on 06/04/2018

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