Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy believes Braydon Hawthorne could be a difference maker for UK.
One Kentucky basketball player who is not being mentioned a lot when prospects for the 2026-27 season are discussed is redshirt freshman wing Braydon Hawthorne. However, Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy, who also does work for the Big Ten Network and FoxSports, says not to sleep on Hawthorne.
“Hawthorne was a top 35 prospect in his recruiting class. It is not unusual to not make an impact as a first-year freshman but for a year he competed against high quality players on a solid NCAA Tournament team. He practiced daily against one of the 30 best teams in the country,” DeCourcy said.
“I think he can be a difference maker. They have a lot of options. He is not a power player. He will be more of a wing. He is going to add some decent size and hopefully the ability to bother bigger players with matchup issues with the way he can score.”
Hawthorne’s father, Walt, did not attend practices last year and did not question what coach Mark Pope and his staff were doing with his son.
“I knew he was getting stronger and mentally preparing for what was coming. He knew next year would be his time to come out and show what he can do. He has got better and is ready to help the team this year,” Walt Hawthorne said. “I never went to practices but people at practice told me he did great and he is ready to be a major contributor.”
2 Responses
That's the thing I didn't understand last year. We were down players to injury. Especially when Kam Williams went out I thought he would take the redshirt off of Hawthorne. He was a top 35 recruit in the best recruiting class maybe ever. I know last year's freshman class was like no other over the past 10 years at least. They were deep with scorers and amazing athletes. The freshman for Illinois that lead them in scoring on a great team I can't think of his name but he was ranked like #50 in the class and Hawthorne was way ahead of him. Hawthorne is a natural scorer who wouldn't have led the team in PPG with Oweh but Hawthorne was better than Aberdeen last year and Aberdeen was a senior and our second leading scorer if that tells you anything. I know Aberdeen and Hawthorne played one on one all the time with Hawthorne beating Aberdeen most of the time. That to me shows that Hawthorne would have helped us and been one of the better scorers on the team. I think this year he will be a backup but he will be one of the first players off the bench. I think this year he will be a 7ppg being the floor and 10 ppg being the ceiling.
He was injured twice: once right before the season (broken jaw/nose/orbital bone) he caught an accidental Mo Diabate elbow to the face causing him to be uncleared for play for like the first month or two of the season, then again in February or late January he had a moderate ankle sprain that kept him sidelined from practice right around the time Pope was considering throwing him in the rotation. His development was stunted by both and by the time he was healthy it didn’t make sense to burn his redshirt.
The other thing to remember: we did not need wing/forward help last year, we needed guard/ball-handler/penetrator/creator help. We needed a PG who could allow Chandler and Aberdeen to slide off the ball. He may be a better one-on-one player than Aberdeen, but he’d be eaten alive by opposing SEC guards as a primary dribbler and passer bc that’s not his game. He’s a slasher and scorer, like you mentioned, and that’s simply not what we needed more of last year with Chandler, Williams, Oweh, Diabate, Jelavic, Johnson, Aberdeen, and Noah already essentially competing for 3 spots on the court when the season started. Lowe going down pushed Aberdeen and Johnson over, but that’s still 6 guys playing for 3 spots. What would adding another have done for us last year?
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