Former Kentucky forward Keion Brooks commits to Washington

A starter for the 2021-22 Kentucky Basketball team has found a new home. Keion Brooks Jr. started all 33 games for the ‘Cats this past season. But he decided to transfer after going through the NBA Draft process and then withdrawing his name.

The former Wildcat will be headed west to play for Mike Hopkins and the Washington Huskies according to Jon Rothstein.

Brooks departs Kentucky after three seasons and will be a true senior for the Huskies this fall. Whether he’ll have additional years of eligibility after that remains to be determined. But in three years at Kentucky, Brooks developed into a core rotation player and regular starter over the last year and a half. He averaged just over 10 points a game in each of his last two seasons. His signature performance coming in a blowout win at National Champion Kansas in January, where Brooks led the ‘Cats to victory with 27 points.

Big get for Mike Hopkins and Washington. Their second UK transfer over the last four seasons after Quade Green played there in 2020 and 2021.

Washington a transfer haven under Mike Hopkins

Mike Hopkins has made pilfering power-five transfers a bit of a hobby since the NCAA enacted new transfer rules a couple years ago. Keion Brooks is just the latest blue chip player to land in the northwest corner of country.

Last season’s Washington roster featured four transfers among the top five scorers on the team. Including Terrell Brown, who averaged 21.7 points a game. UW was the FOURTH stop of his journeyman collegiate career. He played at a community college in Seattle, then lit the nets up for Seattle University before failing to produce at the same level at Arizona. Then he bolted from Tucson to become Washington’s best player. And that’s just one of Washington’s transfers from last year.

Hopkins had additional guys from West Virginia, Stanford, TCU and Michigan. He likes to take less utilized players from other power-five programs rather than load up on a bunch of low-major guys who are used to being their team’s star.

With Brooks, Hopkins has found that type of player. He joins former Washington State leading scorer Noah Williams to form a fairly strong portal class for the Huskies. They also added former top-100 big Frank Kepnang from Oregon. So that’s two guys they took from fellow Pac-12 programs and a two-year starter at Kentucky. Not bad building blocks for Hopkins’ club. Perhaps they’ll do what they couldn’t over the last three years: win games.