Kentucky insider shares latest on status of Antonio Reeves

Kentucky basketball is still unsure where they stand with Antonio Reeves, who averaged north of 14 points a game as the team’s second leading scorer and just pulled his name out of the 2023 NBA Draft pool.

For UK, a veteran knockdown shooter and gifted overall scorer like Reeves is the perfect fit with so much young perimeter talent coming in. However, he may be looking into graduating and transferring to a different school for his final collegiate season.

Reeves, a Chicago native, is reportedly enrolled at his previous school, Illinois State, for summer classes, which could mean he’s working toward finishing his degree to allow him to play somewhere else as a grad transfer. Without a waiver, that’s the only way he can leave Kentucky since he didn’t enter the transfer portal before the NCAA’s deadline.

On Thursday’s edition of Kentucky Sports Radio, host Matt Jones added context to the reports about Reeves taking classes at ISU with plans to graduate and transfer. That information begged some questions about the overall state of the UK hoops program from Jones.

“He can’t be a grad transfer, but if he finishes a summer of credits he can and he’s taking them — again, according to some reports — at Illinois State. If he’s taking them at Illinois State, it’s because he doesn’t want to be here. Right? Why wouldn’t you take it here?”

That would seem to be the case, which is telling in Jones’ eyes.

“I want you to think about the fact that we have no one that played a lot returning. We have whiffed on multiple grad transfers. And you can’t say there’s a plan when they’ve brought guys on campus and gone after them and they’ve all gone somewhere else. Was the plan to lose guys on purpose? It has been in disarray.”

Well, clearly Kentucky wants Antonio Reeves back, and they may not get him. They wanted Oscar Tshiebwe back “desperately,” per Jones, and didn’t get him. They could also use CJ Fredrick, Lance Ware, Daimion Collins, Jacob Toppin or Chris Livingston — who all left. None of which will be drafted, by the way, and all had more years of eligibility remaining, yet they chose to move on to the portal or to the professional ranks.

When every single important player on your team — the nine leaders in minutes — all leave with years of eligibility remaining…well, maybe that sort of trend does suggest that operations are all out of sorts in Lexington.