Bryce Hopkins (Photo by Jeff Houchin)
Bryce Hopkins has unfortunately entered the transfer portal and will explore his options. The first year Kentucky Wildcat went from the country’s 39th high school recruit to a seat on the bench for a majority of Kentucky’s season. It’s a shame we won’t get to see him grow in Kentucky blue, but it’s hard to argue with his decision after being presented such a lack of an opportunity this past season.
Hopkins saw the floor in 28 of Kentucky’s 34 games and averaged just 2.1 points with 1.4 rebounds in 6.4 minutes per contest. He was held scoreless in 13 of those games and played five minutes or less in 17 of them.
His best performance of the year came towards the end of the regular season when he helped edge Kentucky past LSU at Rupp Arena to split the season series. Hopkins scored 13 points on 5-6 shooting to tie for the team’s second-leading scorer. It was a momentum-shifting performance for Hopkins and one that many thought would grow his role as the postseason neared.
However, that was far from the case as he was held scoreless in the team’s final two regular season games and played one scoreless minute against Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament. Hopkins didn’t see any action in the team’s matchup with Tennessee the following day or in the team’s opening round loss of the NCAA Tournament to St. Peter’s.
Hopkins transferring brings back a recent memory of Johnny Juzang, a player that came to Kentucky as the 33rd ranked high school recruit yet didn’t see much opportunity. Juzang did play 12.3 minutes per game but still only averaged 2.9 points with 1.9 rebounds on less than three field goal attempts. Like Hopkins, he transferred after one season at Kentucky. Juzang landed with the UCLA Bruins and has seen back-to-back tournament runs averaging 16 and 15.6 points per game over the last two seasons.
It’s not hard to see that Hopkins can and likely will be a very successful college basketball player. It’s just unfortunate that he won’t have that success at Kentucky. Hopkins was heavily recruited by Louisville, Wisconsin and several other big name programs coming out of high school. Wherever he goes, let’s wish him nothing but the best at his next stop playing college basketball.
6 Responses
This one is going to hurt, but you can’t blame him. Cal said a couple of times during the season he needed to find more minutes for Hopkins, but like usual, it was all talk. Just like saying the same thing about Collins; never happened.
If I am not mistaken, Cal even stated that Washington was not going to play until he was 100%, but we find out today, what a lot of us thought, that Washington was not 100% the last part of the season.
Washington admitted that he was not 100% at the end of the season just a few days ago, and as he is now ready to bolt to the NBA. Nice job John Calipari.
Another Johnny Juzang in the making….
Shame he wasn’t available against Saint Peter. With the other players struggling maybe he could have helped.
What?… oh.
The last 2 weeks of February, the SEC tourney, and the Big Dance should be all about winning. Calipari uses this period to do whatever he can do to boost the NBA draft stock of his pets, without any concern about what it does to our team’s season. How many more double digit loss seasons that end in post season failure are we going to have to endure under this charlatan? Eric Musselman is putting together a preseason No. 1 ranked team for next year. Does BBN have to watch the complete destruction of our program before UK administration steps in to stop the carnage?
Spot on Larry. He is ideal body type at the 4 that all teams want. And we all have seen his potential in the few minutes we seen him.All the buzz was around him in the preseason that he could be best player on team by year end.The problem is it takes playing time for kids to get confidence built and they need know if they make a mistake they won’t be jerked out of game and buried at end of bench for one minor mistake. If he could of gotten pt and been able to play when he made a mistake like several of the others he would of blossomed into one of the best power forwards in sec in my mind. But now he will get playing time somewhere eles and be given time to learn and turn into a great player.Best of luck to Bryce.
I just hope it works out for him. Seemed like a good young man to me who had a lot of possibility in the next few years
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