Jai Lucas on Shaedon Sharpe not playing: "This was always the plan."

Shaedon Sharpe will not play for Kentucky this season, instead opting to prepare for the 2022-23 season in Lexington.

“After talking with Shaedon and his parents, we want to end all of the speculation by again saying that he will not play for us this season,” UK head coach John Calipari announced Monday. “He is committed to bettering himself and our team in practice this year and being better prepared to lead us next season.”

Sharpe, rated No. 1 overall in the final 2021 On3 Player Rankings, signed with Kentucky in November and joined the program as a mid-year enrollee in January.

While Calipari has hinted at the possibility of Sharpe playing this season on numerous occasions — “If he’s ready to be in games, I’ll put him in,” he said January 21 — assistant coach Jai Lucas says the plan from the start was for the five-star guard to sit out and prepare for 2022-23.

As he started practicing and felt what it was like to be a college basketball player, though, Sharpe bought into the hype of potentially playing right away.

“This was kind of always the plan, him to take this year to just practice and develop his body, get ready for next year,” Lucas said Monday. “But when you get here, get around a team, you kind of get excited and want to play in the games. You see the fans and stuff like that, I think that became a part of it. But this was always the plan.”

When the noise started to ramp up, though, Sharpe and his camp decided it was best for all parties involved to shift back to the original plan. Rather than adding any unnecessary distractions for the current team in its pursuit of a national championship, Sharpe wanted to turn his attention to next season.

“It just started to get a lot of noise and stuff, so he was just ready to kind of — Shaedon and his family were ready to move forward and just get ready to focus on the next step,” Lucas said. “It’s just him, knowing that he’s not going to play and then continue to develop and continue to grow his game, grow his body, get ready for the following year.”

While he won’t help the team in games, Lucas says Sharpe remains a tremendous help in practice. After all, it’s not often — if ever — you can add a potential No. 1 draft pick to the fold as an extra piece in scrimmages and drills.

In short, he elevates the players around him whether he’s playing or not. He’s learning and growing while also giving the current team a future pro to guard and work alongside in practice.

“He’s a high-level practice guy,” Lucas said. “You’re not going to run into too many practice guys like that. He has that ability, you know? You’ve got to guard him. He’s coming at you, he’s getting aggressive, getting more comfortable in practice. That’s the biggest thing for a lot of these guys, especially for someone who is missing a year of high school. It’s just an adjustment to the speed, the pace, the strength.

“It’s good for him, too, but it’s good for the others because he’s a different type of athlete you don’t see every day. He’s a different type of shot-maker you don’t see every day. Getting accustomed to the speed of the game, that’s the biggest thing. On the other end, he gives you another guy that elevates practice also.”