Men's College Basketball 2021-2022 Season Preview: Kentucky Wildcats

The SEC is loaded this year as most teams used the transfer portal to their advantage and shored up their talent as well as their depth. Teams like Kentucky, Tennessee and Auburn built elite freshman classes while LSU, Arkansas (as usual) and Florida made key additions via the portal.

SEC slates are going to be high scoring and mega exciting all year long. For DFS players this is the conference that will command your attention, so keep that at the top of your mind as we go team-by-team through the SEC to preview the coming season.

In this one, Kentucky.

(Check out our full college basketball season preview!)

Kentucky Wildcats 2021-2022 Season Preview

2020-2021 record: 9-16 (8-9 SEC), eighth in SEC
Postseason: None

Key Departures | Kentucky Wildcats

BJ Boston (NBA draftee)
Isaiah Jackson (NBA draftee)
Devin Askew (transferred to Texas)
Olivier Sarr (left for NBA)
Terrence Clarke (declared for draft/deceased)

Key Additions | Kentucky Wildcats

Kellan Grady (transferred from Davidson)
Oscar Tshiebwe (transferred from West Virginia)
Sahvir Wheeler (transferred from Georgia)
TyTy Washington (top 15 recruit)
Daimion Collins (top 20 recruit)
Bryce Hopkins (top 50 recruit)
CJ Frederick (transferred from Iowa)

Returners | Kentucky Wildcats

Keion Brooks (10.3 PPG/6.8 RPG/0.8 BPG)
Davion Mintz (11.5 PPG/3.2 RPG/3.1 APG)
Dontaie Allen (5.4 PPG/1.6 RPG)
Jacob Toppin (5.2 PPG/3.5 RPG)
Lance Ware (2 PPG/3 RPG)

Kentucky Wildcats Outlook for 2021-2022

At first glance, this is a very deep team. John Calipari continues to bring in strong recruiting classes year after year and has used the new transfer rules to his advantage by adding several key veterans. There is reason for all the optimism in Lexington, as you can see. This team is strong and there is no denying that. However, for DFS purposes I’m less thrilled than the rest of the industry seems to be. I’m going to be talking about how the “super senior” rule and free transfer year will affect CBB DFS in a strategy article that will be out sometime next week. But I will clue you in now that some teams may wind up being very tricky for fantasy because of these deeper than usual rotations. Will there be enough basketball to go around for all of these talented players in Lexington? It’s tough to say but as of now this doesn’t look like a team I’ll be targeting much for my main builds in DFS. With this kind of depth, we could see 10- or 11-man rotations early on, which would mean fewer minutes for everyone. It’s no secret that we want to target teams that have short rotations because it leads to more minutes. That’s going to be more important than ever before because of the “free year” the NCAA has given to athletes. I’ll go into these strategies in the future, so I’ll try to stay on topic here and tell you about the Kentucky players that you at least want to be aware of.

Kellan Grady was a 37% three-point shooter last year at Davidson while CJ Frederick knocked down 47% of his 76 attempts. Consistent long-range shooting was something the Wildcats were missing last season, so those two will play key roles for this revamped squad. They’ve got a multitude of options to initiate the offense which will come in handy during March. Sahvir Wheeler had the 11th-best assist rate in the country last season. Stud freshman TyTy Washington, an offensive dynamo, should thrive next to Wheeler. Davion Mintz will be able to move off the ball more which should help his overall offensive game. Mintz was a 38% shooter from downtown in 2020 and could see that number sail past 40% with all the talent around him.

The Wildcats frontcourt should be a dominant force on the glass. WVU transfer Oschar Tshiebwe had a 43% combined rebounding rate in his shortened sophomore season and a combined rate of 44% in his freshman year. Reports out of training camp are that he is practically throwing people out of the way to grab every single rebound possible and he could be looking at a career year regardless of how deep the rotation goes. Keion Brooks will likely see his 26.3% shot rate take a hit this year, but he will still be a big focus for this group and is quite the elite rebounder himself. He sported a combined rebounding rate of nearly 32% last year. Teams are going to have one heck of a time trying to get second chance opportunities against a Brooks/Oscar front court. Freshman Daimion Collins is hailed as an aggressive shot blocker and the staff is expecting him to fill the big shoes of Isaiah Jackson from last year, the team’s leading rim protector.

(Check out our rankings of the top 100 teams and top 100 players for men’s college basketball in 2021-2022.)

Summary

This is a deep Kentucky team that requires a wait-and-see approach with their rotation. I’m exercising caution before using any of them in my main builds for the first couple of weeks of the season. They’ve addressed a weakness from last year by snagging a handful of snipers like Kellan Grady and CJ Frederick. The frontcourt players are going to be a brick wall in the paint with high-level rim protection and elite rebounding.