Mark Pope put an emphasis on landing elite 'creators' in the transfer portal

Among the handful of areas Kentucky struggled with last season, one of the more glaring issues was the lack of a pure point guard.

Injuries obviously played a role in that. Jaland Lowe, who was hurt in the preseason, played just nine games and later succumbed to season-ending surgery. That forced Denzel Aberdeen and Jasper Johnson into floor general duties they were not familiar with. Aberdeen, to his credit, did better than anyone could have asked, but Johnson’s transition wasn’t as smooth.

All in all, a clear lack of ball handlers and primary creators ultimately hurt Kentucky when it mattered most. Iowa State’s defensive pressure in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32 forced a hesitant group of Wildcats into a season-high 20 turnovers in what was a blowout loss. Having a healthy Lowe surely would have helped Kentucky as the season went along, but there still would have been little help around him.

Which is why head coach Mark Pope approached this offseason’s transfer portal with an emphasis on shoring up the issues that plagued his team last season. His first two transfer additions were a pair of the top-ranked portal guards: Washington’s Zoom Diallo and Furman’s Alex Wilkins.

“One of the top priorities for us going into the portal was finding creators, and these are two of the elite creators in all of college basketball,” Pope said in his Q&A video from Wednesday. “(Diallo and Wilkins) are going to form a dynamic duo for Kentucky basketball. They are both over 30 percent assist rate. There is only currently one other roster in the entire country with two players over a 30 percent assist rate. This is going to be awesome.”

Per KenPom, Diallo finished with an assist rate of 30.3 percent. Wilkins was even higher at 34.7 percent. Both numbers ranked in the top 100 among all Division I college basketball players last season. For a quick refresher, assist rate is the number of assists a player averages over the course of 100 possessions. Meaning that, whenever Diallo and Wilkins were on the floor last season, there was a better than 30 percent chance that their team’s possession ended with them recording an assist.

For reference, Aberdeen’s assist rate last season finished at 20.3 percent. Johnson’s clocked in at 24.5 percent, although he did not play enough minutes minimum required to be eligible for KenPom’s national stat rankings. KSR’s Brandon Ramsey discovered that only four Wildcats since 2010 have posted an assist rate of 30+ percent: John Wall, Tyler Ulis, Ashton Hagans, and Sahvir Wheeler twice. Pope now has two of them on the same roster. Moving the ball and freeing up teammates for scoring opportunities should not be as much of an issue next season for Kentucky as it was in 2025-26.

On the flip side, Diallo and Wilkins did turn the ball over frequently at their previous stops. However, that’s not unusual for pass-heavy guards. Diallo posted a turnover rate of 15.5 percent last season, per CBB Analytics, while Wilkins was at 19.6 percent. Those numbers ranked them in the 36th and 15th percentiles, respectively, among all guards. Among the top 100 guards in terms of assist rate last season, only 15 of them graded out in the 50th percentile or better — and a few of them will be in the NBA next season. Diallo and Wilkins were part of the other 85 who graded out under that mark.

Being an elite-level creator requires some risk-taking. Diallo and Wilkins more than made up for their miscues by being significantly better at sharing the ball. They did this while playing on the ball more often than not. Pope went after finding better lead guards in the portal than last season, and — at least on paper — he’s accomplished that.