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Les Johns is now publisher of the Demon Deacon Digest covering sports at Wake Forest but he knows plenty about the University of Kentucky basketball program.
He wrote for the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s student newspaper, that led to an internship with the Lexington Herald-Leader. He also did freelance writing for the Louisville Courier-Journal before becoming sports editor at the Hopkinsville News Era where he covered UK sports.
Johns believes Kentucky fans are going to be pleased to have Wake Forest transfer Andrew Carr on Mark Pope’s first UK roster.
“First of all, Andrew Carr is one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet. He’s extremely pleasant and caring, and Big Blue Nation will grow to love him,” Johns said. “On the court, he’s versatile. Against Duke at Joel Coliseum he dominated in the second half.
“The Wake Forest guards got him the ball in the post and if the double team didn’t come, he was able to back his man down and finish. But if help came, Carr made the right pass to open teammates for perimeter shots. He was the catalyst for that upset win that seemed to have the Deacs on the precipice of making the Big Dance.”
He played two years at Delaware before transferring to Wake Forest for two seasons. He has scored over 1,000 collegiate points and also has over 500 rebounds and 100 blocks. He started 68 combined games his two years at Wake Forest and averaged 13.5 points and 6.8 rebounds per game as a senior when he shot 52.6 percent from the field and 37.1 percent from 3.
In his four-year career, Carr has 64 double-figure scoring games and 11 double-doubles. He’s connected on 94 3-pointers at a 34.4 percent rate and blocked 133 shots.
“He’s an excellent 3-point shooter, but he does kind of have a bit of a wind up to his long range shot. He needs to be open, but he can be a reliable stretch four. There are times he can get bullied in the post by bigger, more physically imposing players,” Johns said.
Carr put his name into the NBA draft but was not invited to the NBA combine. That led him to withdraw from the draft and transfer to UK.
“His initial decision to leave Wake Forest caught me by surprise. He had committed to the staff to return for next season and then reversed course the same weekend the Mark Pope hire was announced at Kentucky,” Johns said. “It was assumed he was looking for a blue blood-like program to spend his last season of eligibility, and many folks figured Villanova would be high on his list.
“In terms of ultimately landing at Kentucky, that’s not surprising. It fit the criteria of what he was looking for in his final collegiate season and he should be a great fit for what Pope will look to run this coming season.”
Pope called him the “prototypical college and NBA power forward” when he signed with Kentucky and noted he had been the “captain of every team he’s ever been associated with.” Pope said he expected Kentucky fans to love him.
What about the Big Blue spotlight that can overwhelm some players?
“I don’t think that will be a problem for Carr, especially considering the positive vibes currently engulfing the Kentucky basketball program and this upcoming first season of the Pope era,” Johns said. “Fans will love Carr and Carr will embrace Big Blue Nation.”
6 Responses
Pretty cool “ stamp of approval “ from a knowledgeable source !!!
The DOJ has joined a federal court ruling that will allow for unlimited transfers with no waiting period to play. This combined with NIL and the ruling that athletes are school employees will forever change college athletics. Enos Canter is probably wondering why this didn’t happen when he was at UK. If NIL had been allowed, Eddie Sutton and Chris Mills would have stayed longer at UK. Junior college, Division 2, and small to mid major D 1 programs are basically going to become farm teams for the larger Division 1 schools. Kids at the bigger D1 schools that don’t see the PT they had hoped for or don’t get along with a coach, and/or don’t get the NIL money they had hoped for are free to pursue or be pursued by other D1 programs whllere these things will be better…hopefully. Now, coaches not only have to worry about a kid being OAD to the NBA, some can and will be OAD moving on to other schools. Revenue from game programs should skyrocket as very few kids will be around long enough for the fans to know who they are. Play by play and color analysts jobs just became that much harder as they will have major prep time to be able to talk intelligently about any given team’s roster. I wonder if the next development will be that of players being "contracted" to play thus eliminating the unpredictability that NIL and the portal bring. Now that we have created this monster, will we be happy with it? I will miss having players like Jack Givens, Rick Robey, Mike Phillips, and James Lee being here for 4 years. Be careful what you ask for…you just might get it.
I think its a good and bad thing. I think contracts will work out better because you will know how long a player will be on your team. I called this before happened that smaller teams will be farm teams like Eastern Kentucky Murray state and more head state and even western Kentucky now will fit in this mold. I like it more than the way things are at the moment.
A lot of the issues sports teams are now facing is caused by the arrogance and tyrannical rulings of the NCAA themselves. Kids being forced to sit out a season when transferring, not being released by schools trying to stop kids from leaving while the school could refuse to renew a kids scholarship, kids not being allowed to make enough money to even go out to eat or go on a date without being penalized, you can go back a few years and find hundreds of kids that were mistreated by their school or NCAA. Kids that signed the dotted line basically became property of the NCAA and they would pick and choose which ones to penalize and when to close their eyes. Something had to give and now it has and the NCAA has no idea how to wrap their arms around it and develop some resemblance of sanity. This all came about due to desires of money, power, and control.
The NCAA is finally being forced to give the players money this should have happened years ago and their will be alot more guys coming back to play a extra year or two instead of a NBA team gambling like a casino in the draft.
Carr will be our leading scorer on this years team. The thing I love about this years team is if you look at the stats of every player they all got better every single year. This never happens especially if you are switching schools or you are coming from a mid major to a power 5 conference or should I say a power 4 conference. Most of the transfers were 4* high school athletes except a couple and Carr and Brea and Alomor were all 2*. That means nothing because some kids blossom later in life than others. Some kids are fully developed at 18 and some grow until they are 21-23 years old (especially white kids). To me Carr is exactly the guy Pope needed. He can pass out of the post very well. I watch a ton of college basketball nearly every game on TV and bounce back and forth during commercials. I seen him play 5 or 6 times and didn’t know he would be playing for Kentucky. I absolutely loved his style he is a very unselfish player. He could have averaged 16-18 ppg if he took more shots. He reminds me of a poor mans Larry Bird. His shot mechanics are alot like Birds and he should improve his 3 point % this year probably shooting in the 41-45% range. I think Pope will get him in the weight room and he should gain about 5-10 pounds of muscle to get ready for the SEC because the ACC is not as brutal as the SEC. One more thing that will work in his favor is that they call a ton of fouls in the SEC so he will shoot more FTs than last year. With a better team around him guys won’t put as much pressure on him as they did at Wake Forest their will be no double teams on him, which made him a better player but you won’t see that this year with all the weapons we have. If they play help defense on him in the post whoever doubles him will pay he can throw a lob to Garrison or Williams. If it’s a guard be careful we have a ton of shooters on this team. Carr will kick it out to a open Kriiisa or Brea or Jaxson or Chandler and they will make the defense pay for it. I really think we have the best and deepest team that we have had in 10 years since the platoon system team. If he adds another player to this team it will almost be unfair with so many weapons. We are very very very underrated but I would rather be underrated than overrated. I don’t think you put your best 5 on the court to start the game. Their are so many combinations you can use were the talent level never drops off that you can run a team to death and we should still have fresh legs with no fall off. The highest returning scorer on our team from college basketball last year is said to be the worst in the rankings system Alomor. I don’t agree with that but the experts think so. Alomor said he’s going to get his weight up about 10-15 pounds if he does so he will be a key contributor behind Carr because you want to keep Carr fresh. We have 9 legitimate college players on this team and a couple question marks we will see how they all gel together.