Mark Pope used 'Moneyball' approach in the portal to strike gold with Ansley Almonor

Back in the offseason, On3’s transfer portal rankings listed Fairleigh Dickinson’s Ansley Almonor as the 345th-best overall player in all of Division I hoops. That’s not exactly in the range of prospects the Kentucky Wildcats, going into a critical first season with new head coach Mark Pope, would expect to be looking at. The next “lowest” ranked portal addition was Kerr Kriisa at 113th — well over 200 spots ahead of Almonor.

But through 24 games this season, Almonor has severely outplayed that ranking. The 6-foot-7 senior wing has appeared in every single game for the Wildcats, starting the last six while Andrew Carr continues to recover from a back injury that has limited him as of late. Almonor is averaging 6.1 points and 1.8 rebounds in 15.7 minutes per game this season on shooting splits of 51.7/44.3/88.5. He’s been even better shooting the ball in conference play with a 20-38 (52.6 percent) mark from deep against SEC opponents.

Pope said in the preseason Almonor would win Kentucky a couple of games. He’s already helped the Wildcats win more than a couple though. His 12 points in the first win over Tennessee were just as necessary as his 13 points in the rematch victory earlier this week. Almonor shot 3-6 from deep on Jan. 11 in a road win over a ranked Mississippi State team. That’s three wins he’s played a massive role in just during SEC games alone.

“I know I told you all he was going to win us some games before the season,” Pope said after Tuesday’s win over the Volunteers. “I didn’t even expect he would win us this many.”

.@ansleyalmonor with a new season high 🌟

13 PTS (4-5 FG, 2-3 3FG) pic.twitter.com/zw7l65TpNz

— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) February 12, 2025

A guy who was once considering the likes of Siena and Pepperdine upon putting his name in the portal, somehow ended up at Kentucky. How? Pope credits using the “Moneyball” approach, putting a major emphasis on using data and analytics to strike gold on one of the best-kept portal secrets.

“I didn’t know Ansley at all before I was here at Kentucky,” Pope said Thursday. “We have a bunch of different prongs of our portal attack, and one of them is kind of the Moneyball space of how we run with guys in the portal. So of course, there’s all the guys we know that are super public-facing, high-ranked portal guys. And so there’s a bunch of different areas in that space where we kind of attack the portal, but the Moneyball part of it is really interesting too.

“You have your Excel spreadsheet with all of the columns of data, and we start to say, ‘Okay, let’s forget the algorithm that puts all that data together and then ranks players, and let’s just only go to like these three data points and throughout all the other data and see like, who raises to the top of the list if we do that?”

Almonor was one of those guys who stood out. It’s easy to see why now too. Almonor is a perfect fit for Pope. He can shoot the hell out of the ball, spaces the floor as a stretchable 3/4, knows when to cut, has plenty of college experience, and fights hard for rebounds. Almonor has talked endlessly this season about how grateful he is to play at Blue Blood like Kentucky — going from averaging 16.4 points per game last season at Fairleigh Dickinson to less than half that was never going to be a concern for him.

“His name came up pretty prominently on a list of guys we’re like, what do you think? Is there any way?” Pope continued. “And then we started to watch film. And I can remember watching early clips on him and feeling he had a creative vibe. He was a good scorer and he had a creative vibe as a cutter. He had a real sense about, kind of finding open space.

“And clearly we’re attracted to his ability to shoot the ball and then you hear that he beat Purdue in the first round (of the 2023 NCAA Tournament). And so there’s that little component, like, man, he’s played in big games and all that stuff kind of coming together. I don’t know if that’s exactly factually correct, but to my memory, that’s pretty close to how it went.”

KSR has learned assistant coaches Cody Fueger and Jason Hart were the ones who first discovered Almonor as a potential portal target for the ‘Cats. That’s a pretty good find for the second-to-last addition in what was a full-on rebuild for Pope’s first team in Lexington.

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