4-Point Play: Karter Knox is a Cat

The current team stole the show on Saturday with Kentucky taking care of business to close out the regular season in Knoxville, all eyes on locking up the No. 2 seed in Nashville and officially turning our collective attention to postseason. Lost in the midst of it all? A brand-new future addition for the Wildcats in the form of 2024 four-star wing Karter Knox.

Standing 6-6, 224 pounds, the Riverview, FL native joins a six-man class for John Calipari that includes five-stars Jayden Quaintance and Boogie Fland and four-stars Billy Richmond, Somto Cyril and Travis Perry. That group sits slightly behind Duke at No. 2 in the On3 Team Recruiting Rankings and firmly ahead of the rest of the top five with Baylor, Alabama and North Carolina rounding out the group.

With the dust settled a bit on Kentucky’s win over Tennessee and the calm before the storm here ahead of the SEC Tournament, let’s dig into Knox’s commitment and what it means for next year’s Wildcats, shall we?

More than Kevin’s brother

As a senior at Overtime Elite, Knox closed out the regular season averaging 23.1 points in the league — third overall — while shooting 34.0% from three on 8.3 attempts per contest and 43.9% from the field and racking up 5.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.3 steals. And then in the playoffs, he followed that up with 24.0 points on 43.6% shooting and 38.5% from three with 6.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists.

Before suiting up with RWE over at OTE, he finished second in scoring during the Nike EYBL regular season with 21.2 points per contest on 54% shooting and 34% from three before going for 16.4 points and 5.2 rebounds per outing at Peach Jam.

Point being, he’s done nothing but produce this past year in various settings and higher-stake situations.

Knox was known as Kevin’s little brother coming out of Tampa in his early stages of high school, talk of comparisons and following in his footsteps dominating conversations more than his actual on-court abilities. He’s done his part to shift that dialogue to his biggest strengths and weaknesses, the list of the former category growing beyond the latter.

Positional versatility

So what has the conversation been? Taking nearly 18 shots per game as a senior — eight being threes — Knox has continued to make the most of his high volume, hitting the 20-point mark in 13 regular season matchups and five in the playoffs. And though overall efficiency has been up and down, he still cleared the 45% shooting mark on ten separate occasions as the offensive focal point of his team and among the best of the entire league. He was the league’s most productive scorer in RWE’s playoff run, as well.

But it’s the how that stands out. He’s not a lean chucking guard who relies on getting perimeter shots off because he has to, unable to use size or quickness to get to his spots. Instead, Knox is built like a tight end in the NFL, strong and athletic with powerful finishing abilities. He has stretches of settling and his motor leaves you wanting more at times, but when it’s humming, he’s a lethal three-level scoring threat. He balances finesse and explosion well, allowing for three-four positional versatility, similar to the likes of Chris Livingston, Justin Edwards and Adou Thiero.

That’s a plug-and-play piece capable of making an immediate impact.

Pushing chips in on youth again

Coach Cal zigged while the rest of the college basketball world zagged last cycle, overloading on young talent rather than hitting the transfer portal to lay out the foundation of the roster. Vets were the complementary pieces, not the guys you built around. And though it hasn’t always been smooth sailing thanks to injury and eligibility hurdles, among other typical in-season growing pains, the payoff has been worth the risk entering postseason play.

Even in a national class considered worse top-to-bottom than the one before, Calipari continued the trend, loading up next year’s roster with teenagers. Quaintance is the prize of the frontcourt — a prodigy, as the staff calls him — while Fland is expected to “have the keys to the Lamborghini and drive it the right way.” Then you’ve got fit-based pieces around those two: defense with Richmond, scoring with Perry and size with Cyril, offensive versatility now with Knox.

And they’re still flirting with potential reclass candidates to round things out.

It adds up considering the anticipated overhaul the program is expected to face again — that’s the nature of the beast with good, young Kentucky rosters. DJ Wagner, Rob Dillingham, Justin Edwards, Reed Sheppard and Zvonimir Ivisic will all have stay-or-go decisions that may favor the latter while losing Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell regardless. And then you never know what happens in the portal world with potential surprises elsewhere.

It’s clear Calipari won’t be taking his chances banking on returning talent to build out the team. Expect the worst, hope for the best, right?

OTE pipeline continues

It was a wild recruitment that saw Kentucky, Louisville, South Florida and Overtime Elite all move up and down the priority list at various points. Depending on who you talked to, each of the four led in recent weeks and months before the Wildcats emerged as the final landing spot.

Now that his commitment is official, you can add him to the running list of OTE products finding their way to Lexington, a wildly successful pipeline thus far. It started with Dillingham, the ultimate home run, while Jordan Burks has exceeded early expectations in his own right. Calipari recently said “when we look back and six, seven years from now, eight years, we will be talking about (Burks) has busted through more than most of the other guys.”

Cyril committed to Kentucky last June and he’s got the physicality and athleticism to take over the enforcer role early. Knox makes it four Wildcats in the last two recruiting cycles to join the fold.

The only question left: who is next?