Antonio Reeves making an early case as Kentucky's go-to shooter

CJ Fredrick has deservedly earned the reputation as Kentucky’s best outside shooter throughout the preseason, but Antonio Reeves is making his own case for that honor.

Through three games on the team’s Big Blue Bahamas Tour, Reeves is the Wildcats’ second-leading scorer at 15.3 points per contest. The 6-foot-5 guard has connected on 10 of his 18 attempts from beyond the arc, good enough for a 55.6 shooting percentage from deep. Overall, he’s converting on over 53 percent of his total shot attempts.

Reeves’ best outing of the trip so far was during Saturday night’s 118-56 drumming of Carleton University (Canada) in which the Illinois State transfer dropped 23 points, three rebounds, two assists, and one steal in 21 minutes of action. He shot 8-12 overall from the floor and was an efficient 5-8 from distance.

“I just got hot and they kept feeding me, so I enjoyed it,” Reeves told KSR postgame with a smile on his face.

Tone set tonight – 23 PTS 😼@ToniooReeves pic.twitter.com/CgLVVcf9JI

— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) August 14, 2022

The senior sharpshooter has made the transition from mid-major to Blue Blood look unusually smooth.

“He’s a vet,” Acting head coach KT Turner said of Reeves after Saturday’s win. “Sometimes it’s hard when you’re the primary guy on a team and you come to a team like this to fit in, and he’s done a heck of a job figuring out where he fits in at and when he can score and when to pass. He’s really unselfish. He’s not hunting shots and stuff like that. He’s been doing really good for us and we’re expecting him to have a big year.”

“I think some of that is, naturally, if you’re athletic, if you’re fast, if you’re strong, it’s not that big of a deal. And ‘Tone is all those things,” Sahvir Wheeler added. “He’s fast, he’s strong, he’s athletic, he’s got good length himself and he’s a scorer. At Illinois State, maybe he was at the top of the scout, had the ball the most, but now here, he’s playing off close-outs. The game is probably a lot easier to him, or maybe even slower to him. I know he’s getting easier looks and we want him to score, we want him to keep being aggressive like that.”

Fredrick should still be considered Kentucky’s top overall shooter — his career three-point percentage of 46.6 percent on 178 total attempts justifies that thinking. His time will come once the season begins. But as Fredrick continues to work his way back to being 100 percent healthy, Reeves has stepped up in his place as the team’s go-to outside shot maker.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, either. During his three years at Illinois State, Reeves was a bonafide scorer. He went from 7.2 points per game as a freshman to 12.4 as a sophomore before breaking out for 20.1 as a junior, which later earned him a spot on the 2021-22 All Missouri Valley Conference Second Team.

It was that junior season when he found his groove, too. Reeves went from shooting 31.4 percent from deep as a rookie and 30.6 percent in his second year to connecting on an impressive 39.0 percent in ’21-22 while doubling his volume. It’s only been three preseason games in the middle of August, but those numbers don’t appear to be a fluke.

“I have a group of guys that I call my brothers and we basically bond with one another really well so that’s one thing,” Reeves said of why the transition has been smooth for him. “I’ve been playing D1 for three years now, so it hasn’t been too much of a dropoff.”