Kentucky
Mark Stoops expects turnover and surprises during “tumultuous week”
In some ways, the writing has been on the wall for this season for a while. Even though it was only made official with last week’s loss to Texas, it’s been clear for weeks the Cats weren’t going to a bowl. The season has been on a steady decline for over a month, with today’s humiliating 41-14 loss to Louisville serving as the icing on a crap cake.
After today’s loss, Stoops admitted he’s been thinking about how to fix the issues that plagued Kentucky this season for quite some time. The rebuild starts tomorrow with an all-staff meeting ahead of what is known as the wildest week in college football. The Early Signing Period starts on Wednesday and even though the transfer portal doesn’t open until December 9, Stoops said there will be some hard conversations in the coming days as players decide their futures and the staff tries to make room for a rebuild.
“Tumultuous week; that’s an understatement,” Stoops said during his postgame conversation with Tom Leach. “There’s going to be a lot of turnover and there needs to be. And nobody needs to panic because we, I, have to create room. I have to build a roster that can compete in this monster league. And we clearly didn’t meet it this year but it’s not like we’re going to be so far away.”
Stoops compared Kentucky’s current situation to when he took over for Joker Phillips back in 2013. Thanks to the transfer portal and NIL, a roster rebuild can happen much more quickly, especially with the right resources, which he says he believes he has. Stoops wants to build around Kentucky’s young playmakers — Cutter Boley first and foremost — and restock the rest of the roster through the portal.
Player meetings will take place in the next few days; while Stoops and his staff will have a plan of who they want to keep and who will need to go, he knows they’ll likely get some bad news too.
“There are going to be players that we ask to go somewhere else, to go play somewhere else, and there are going to be guys that we ask to come back. There’s going to be incoming freshmen, there’s going to be incoming portal [players], and there’s probably going to be some surprises. Let’s be honest. There’s going to be a surprise and again, we won’t flinch. It’s not like we’re going to like it or anything. If you lose somebody you don’t want to but it’s not the end all be all. There are ways to replace anybody.”
Stoops joked that fans probably want to replace him but he’s not going anywhere. After all, as he said earlier in his conversation with Leach, he’s the winningest coach in Kentucky football history. He’s confident he can turn things around, even as the landscape of the sport continues to shift by the second.
“It’s not like I have no idea what I’ve done. I’ve done things at this school that nobody else has. It’s not like I totally forgot, but I have to do better. I also accept it so I don’t, want anybody to attack me for saying that. I’m admitting and saying I need to do a better job and we will.”
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Which teams need to nail the NBA Draft the most?
Listing the teams that can least afford to mess up this year’s NBA draft.
LEXINGTON — Otega Oweh will begin his NBA career on the move.
The Miami Heat drafted Oweh in the second round of the 2026 NBA Draft on Wednesday, June 24. Oweh was the No. 41 overall pick (and the 11th selection of the second round).
But he won’t remain in Miami: Oweh reportedly is part of a trade that will send him to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Oweh starred for Kentucky basketball the past two seasons. He was a primary component of the first and second squads of coach Mark Pope’s tenure at UK.
Here’s what to know about Oweh, the Wildcats’ newest draft selection:
Oweh began his time as a collegian at Oklahoma, where he spent two seasons. He played in 32 games (28 starts) for the Sooners in 2023-24, averaging 11.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.5 steals and 1 assist per outing.
But he was a revelation at Kentucky, inarguably the team’s top player the past two seasons.
During his debut in 2024-25, Oweh paced the Wildcats in points per game (16.2) and double-digit efforts (33 times in 36 games). He started the season scoring 10 or more in the team’s first 26 games, which was the longest streak by a Kentucky player since Malik Monk did so 30 times in a row in 2016-17.
After going through the draft process and returning to UK, Oweh entered the 2025-26 campaign as the SEC’s preseason Player of the Year.
He wound up being every bit as consistent as in Year 1, scoring 10-plus points in 35 of the Cats’ 36 games. Oweh, who was named to the All-SEC Second Team by the league’s coaches, averaged a team-high 18.6 points per game.
He finished his Kentucky career with 1,255 points, the most ever by a player in his first two seasons with the program.
Along with his scoring prowess, Oweh also set single-season personal bests for rebounds (4.8), assists (2.7) and steals (1.8) per game.
Despite his standout two-year career with the Cats, Oweh was not a highly touted transfer portal prospect following the 2023-24 season. He was 31st according to 247Sports, while ESPN ranked him 59th and On3 didn’t even include him in its top 100.
Hailing from Blair Academy in New Jersey, Oweh was unanimously rated as a four-star prospect in the 2022 class, earning that ranking from Rivals, 247Sports and ESPN.
Oweh was slightly taller than 6-foot-4 (without shoes) at the NBA Draft Combine. During that testing, he weighed 216 pounds. That’s nearly identical to Oweh’s figures on Kentucky’s official 2025-26 roster, where he was listed at 6-4 and 220 pounds.
NBAdraft.net wrote that Oweh’s most logical pro comps are the Harrison twins — ex-UK greats Aaron and Andrew — and Josh Okogie.
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
Kentucky
Top knee doctor confident Jayden Quaintance’s injury not a long-term concern, but clean-up procedure possible
One of the nation’s top knee doctors shared a positive diagnosis with former Kentucky forward Jayden Quaintance going into the 2026 NBA Draft, revealing that his knee is not expected to be a long-term concern, KSR has learned.
That may include a second procedure to officially put the injury suffered in February 2025 behind him, however.
Dr. Riley Williams III — head team physician and orthopedic surgeon for the Brooklyn Nets and famous for performing surgery on Paul George’s gruesome open tibia-fibula fracture with USA Basketball in 2014 — gave a second opinion on Quaintance’s injured right knee that limited him to four games in Lexington and recommended a follow-up procedure that could keep him off the floor for six months. The 6-foot-11 prospect’s ACL remains fully intact and his knee can be maintained at its current state, but a clean-up is preferred for a permanent resolution.
Medical concerns led to his slide in final mock drafts — he was projected to go No. 27 overall to the Boston Celtics, according to ESPN — before ultimately landing with the San Antonio Spurs at No. 20. This procedure could lead to a delayed start to his rookie season, but the long-term reward of a healthy 15-year career in the NBA is the prize on the table. It kept teams in the lottery and late teens intrigued, despite rumors of a potential fall to the second round. Sources close to Quaintance felt San Antonio at No. 20 was a backstop for the talented forward going into draft night, an educated hunch that proved to be accurate.
Quaintance worked out for the Dallas Mavericks (No. 9, No. 30), Milwaukee Bucks (No. 10), Oklahoma City Thunder (No. 12, No. 17), Chicago Bulls (No. 15), Toronto Raptors (No. 19), San Antonio Spurs (No. 20) and Boston Celtics (No. 27) ahead of the draft, but the Thunder and Spurs were the most aggressive throughout the predraft process, sources tell KSR. Once OKC snagged Michigan’s Aday Mara at No. 12 overall, it opened the door for a move to San Antonio for the former Wildcat.
There was disappointment in Quaintance’s absence on draft night after failing to receive a green room invite, but receiving confirmation of no long-term knee concern was the biggest priority — and that came after meeting with arguably the nation’s top knee doctor before the 2026 NBA Draft began in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
Quaintance was not the top-five pick he was expected to be going into his lone season at Kentucky, but he found himself in a perfect winning situation in San Antonio next to the future face of the NBA in Victor Wembanyama, even if that includes a short-term setback.
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