Reed Sheppard is changing jersey numbers for Kentucky basketball career. Why the switch?

For his first day as a college student on the University of Kentucky’s campus, Reed Sheppard landed on a unique wardrobe choice.

Though he’s yet to play a game for the Wildcats’ basketball team, Sheppard’s career to this point has been closely followed by plenty around the commonwealth.

The reason? He’s UK basketball royalty. His father, Jeff Sheppard, was the most outstanding player of the 1998 Final Four, leading the Cats to a national title that year. His mother, Stacey Reed Sheppard, is one of the most celebrated players in program history, still ranking in the top 10 in several stats in UK’s all-time record books.

And so Reed Sheppard, a teenager from Laurel County, has grown up around the program, following the Wildcats closely and embracing the team’s past while planning to be part of its future.

So when the big day came — Reed’s first afternoon on campus as a UK student — there he was in his dorm room, surrounded by his family and wearing a shirt older than he is. The design was unmistakable to anyone who followed the Cats at the time: a T-shirt featuring the logos of the teams that advanced to the 1998 Final Four.

“I have a few of Dad’s old Kentucky shirts,” Reed said Wednesday, a few weeks into his new life as a UK basketball player. “So I figured, you know, first day of moving in, might as well rock an old Kentucky shirt. So that was pretty cool for me.”

Reed, who admitted to grabbing some “old” UK basketball shirts out of his dad’s closet, said Jeff had seen him wear that particular one around the house a couple of times, so he wasn’t necessarily thrown off by the sight of it on that May 31 move-in day.

The elder Sheppard did get quite the surprise around that same time, though.

Reed Sheppard, who wore No. 3 for North Laurel High School and on the AAU circuit, will have a new number on his jersey when he debuts for the Wildcats. It’ll be his dad’s No. 15.

Jeff Sheppard didn’t see that one coming.

“It was really cool,” Reed said. “It was cool for me, to be able to tell him. And it shocked him. I don’t think he was expecting it, just because I wore 3 my whole life. But after I told him, it was a really cool moment.”

The new Wildcat explained that sophomore Adou Thiero already had No. 3, dating back to last season. Sheppard noticed that while watching the Wildcats during the 2022-23 campaign, and — knowing that Thiero was likely to be back in Lexington for this season — figured he might need to start thinking about a possible switch.

“Yeah, I definitely thought about it,” he said. “I always kept it to myself. I never told him. In my head, I was like, ‘I’m probably gonna wear No. 15,’ but I never said anything to him.”

UK officially revealed the jersey numbers for the 2023-24 roster last week, but Reed wanted to be the one to tell his father that he’d be following in his footsteps in yet another way, so he spilled the beans before that announcement went public.

“He was excited. He was smiling,” he said. “... So it was really cool, being able to do that.”

Sheppard laughed when asked whether he’d approached Thiero about the No. 3, perhaps to ask what it might take to pry it loose. “No. I wasn’t asking any questions,” he said, implying that he knew his place as a freshman new to the team.

He also said that, while he’s always donned No. 3, it didn’t really hold any special meaning to him. “So when it got switched, it was no big deal for me.”

It might have been a bigger deal when the same thing happened to his father, who has said in the past that former UK star Rex Chapman was his favorite player to emulate as a high schooler in Georgia. And Jeff Sheppard wore Chapman’s No. 3 during those days, ultimately earning the state’s Mr. Basketball honors.

When he arrived in Lexington in 1993, Sheppard wanted No. 3, but that jersey already belonged to junior Chris Harrison, and so Sheppard and longtime UK equipment manager Bill Keightley went back and forth on what might be possible.

As Reed recalls hearing the story, No. 15 was all they had left. So that’s what his dad got.

Jeff obviously did pretty well with it. He finished his career with 1,091 points, that Final Four MVP award and a national championship.

It’s a number that has also been worn by several of the program’s biggest names. Alex Groza, Ed Davender and the trail-blazing Reggie Warford all had No. 15 before Jeff Sheppard came to campus. DeMarcus Cousins and Willie Cauley-Stein have worn it during Coach John Calipari’s tenure. No Wildcat has been No. 15 since Isaac Humphries left UK after the 2016-17 season.

Now it’s back in the Sheppard family.

And so when Reed Sheppard takes the court — first at the GLOBL JAM exhibition tournament in Canada next week, then in November when the real season begins — he’ll be continuing that legacy. It was pointed out Wednesday to the college freshman that not everyone wants to follow their parents’ path in the way that Sheppard will be. That others might shy away from such lofty expectations as those that were set here by his mother and father more than two decades ago.

Instead, Reed Sheppard is embracing it all. And now he’ll be wearing it for as long as he’s a Wildcat, a daily reminder of his goals — on and off the court — during his time as a Kentucky basketball player.

“Mom and Dad are both great, great people, off the court as well, as they were good basketball players on the court,” he said. “But I think the biggest thing for me is just to continue to be like them, off the court. Like I said, on the court they were great players and accomplished great things, but off the court they’re even better people.

“And I think just continuing to develop being a better person off the court is really special.”

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