A disturbing number for Kentucky basketball as Antonio Reeves deliberates his future

Anyone who’s been paying attention surely knows the numbers by now.

Eight Kentucky men’s basketball players have left the program so far this offseason.

One more is thinking about following those Wildcats out the door.

Seven scholarship players are all John Calipari currently has on his 2023-24 roster.

Five are freshmen.

Two are sophomores, the only returnees from last season’s team.

There’s plenty to be worried about throughout that numerical rundown, but that last figure should be enough to make UK basketball fans especially anxious as this offseason drags on.

If Antonio Reeves doesn’t ultimately return to Lexington — he’s withdrawn from the NBA Draft but could still transfer to another school — that means only two recruited, scholarship players from Kentucky’s 2022-23 roster (little-used sophomores Ugonna Onyenso and Adou Thiero) would be back for another run.

Even by the high-roster turnover standards of the Calipari era, that has been a recipe for losing once the silly season ends and the real basketball begins.

This is Calipari’s 14th full offseason as UK’s head coach. In the previous 13, only twice has the program failed to return more than two active Wildcats who were originally recruited as scholarship players.

And those two offseasons led to — by any measure — Calipari’s two worst seasons on the job.

After UK won the 2012 national title, it was an exodus of key players, with Anthony Davis, Doron Lamb, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Terrence Jones, Marquis Teague and Darius Miller all going in that year’s NBA Draft and Eloy Vargas running out of eligibility.

Technically, only one scholarship player who actually played for that title team returned: freshman reserve Kyle Wiltjer. Another who had previously played limited minutes for the program, Jon Hood, was back after sitting out the entire 2011-12 season due to injury. And UK also had point guard Ryan Harrow, who was around the 2011-12 team but couldn’t play due to the NCAA transfer rules at the time. The rest of the returning roster was composed of players who came to Lexington as walk-ons.

And that team — with freshmen holding the top three spots in the scoring column — ultimately went 21-12 and missed the NCAA Tournament altogether.

Fast forward several years, and Calipari found himself with a similar roster situation amid a college basketball landscape not conducive to teaching newcomers.

Eight players who started the 2019-20 season on scholarship left at the end of it.

Only one scholarship Wildcat who actually played on that team — freshman forward Keion Brooks — returned to Lexington, joining classmate Dontaie Allen, who sat out the 2019-20 season due to injury.

COVID-19 pandemic protocols limited time in the gym for a young Kentucky team in dire need of work, and those Cats went on to a 9-16 record, arguably the program’s worst basketball season in modern history.

In every other Calipari era offseason, UK returned at least three scholarship players. The Hall of Fame coach’s two best Kentucky teams once he got settled — the 2012 title team and 38-1 squad of 2014-15 — relied on freshmen but retained five and eight scholarship players, respectively. (Calipari’s original, star-studded UK team also had several talented holdovers from the Billy Gillispie era, including Patrick Patterson and Darius Miller.)

Another common theme: The returnees on those highly successful teams all went through struggles the season before. The veterans on Calipari’s first squad had to live through Gillispie’s reign. The top returnees on the NCAA title team — super sophomores Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones, plus Miller — endured their own growing pains during the 2010-11 campaign before making a Final Four run. And the 38-1 vets seemed on the verge of possibly missing the NCAA Tournament altogether the previous year, before their unlikely journey to the 2014 national championship game.

Obviously, this past season’s Kentucky team went through quite a bit, as well. And, as it stands, Reeves would be the only returnee who played major minutes amid those struggles. Thiero played relatively little for much of the season. Onyenso played hardly at all.

A Reeves return would give UK a proven college scorer — as well as a 40ish-percent three-point shooter — but it would also give the younger Cats, as well as whoever else joins the roster over the next few weeks, some insight into how Calipari coaches and what it’s like to play a major role in the Kentucky basketball fishbowl.

This isn’t to say UK will be fine and dandy if Reeves decides to come back. Kentucky’s 2023-24 roster has glaring needs, and no one player will be able to fill those gaps. And it won’t necessarily be a doomsday situation if Reeves moves on. There’s still abundant talent in the transfer portal, and Calipari has worked some recruiting magic a time or two in the past.

But the numbers make clear that it pays to have some continuity. And while he’s not necessarily a vocal leader, Reeves could be something of a steadying force for a bunch of wide-eyed Kentucky basketball newbies as they try to compete against older, more experienced competition.

And that could be crucial for a young roster of five-star recruits coming in cold, no matter who the Cats add between now and the start of the 2023-24 season.

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