Kentucky head coach Mark Pope has constructed a bright roster heading into the 2026-27 campaign, giving BBN a sense of excitement with the season still months out. While most of the fanbase is raving about Milan Momcilovic, Zoom Diallo, and Malachi Moreno — and rightfully so — in between lies a diamond in the rough that not many fans seem to be chatting about; his name is Alex Wilkins.

As it stands, Wilkins is projected to be UK’s starting shooting guard, so let’s take a deeper look into what kind of player Rupp Arena will be housing this season.

The 6-foot-6 rising sophomore guard comes to Kentucky after spending his freshman season as a Furman Paladin, where he averaged a team-high 17.8 points, two rebounds and a team-high 4.7 assists per game. The Massachusetts native started in all 35 games and finished the season shooting 46% from the field, 32.8% from downtown and 82.4% from the free-throw line.

In terms of consistency, Wilkins recorded a boatload of individual high-scoring performances, reaching 20-plus points in 13 different contests while reaching double digits in nearly every affair. His season-high in terms of points came in the SOCON Tournament semifinals when he torched UNC Greensboro with 34 points.

Wilkins reached 30-plus points one time prior on Feb. 1 against Chattanooga, scoring 33 of the team’s 75 points.

UK isn’t just getting a pure bucket, but it’s also getting someone who knows how to incorporate his teammates and dish out the ball. Wilkins accumulated seven-plus assists in seven different games, with his season-high of nine coming in a 105-57 win over the Bob Jones Bruins, a Division-II school.

In terms of the postseason, Wilkins ripped through the SOCON Tournament, scoring 19 points in the Quarterfinal against Samford, 34 points against UNC Greensboro and 12 points in the Championship against ETSU.

He also totaled 10 assists over the course of those three games.

In the first round of the NCAA Tournament against No. 2 seed UConn, Wilkins made a name for himself nationally, scoring a team-high 21 points while adding one rebound and four assists to his stat line, shooting 8-15 from the field and 4-8 from deep.

One of the few knocks that Wilkins received following his freshman year was the average number of turnovers that he surrendered per game last season, which was 3.8. If he can find a way to slightly decrease that number, he can seriously develop himself into a threatening player on all perimeters of the court.

However, even if he still struggles with that fixable negative, his scoring and passing abilities can still carry him and those around him to wins, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.

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