There’s a number that explains why Kentucky won the offseason, and it isn’t the recruiting rank everyone’s repeating today.
Milan Momcilovic shot 48.7% from three-point range last season, and he did it on real volume: 136 threes made, fifth-most in the country. ESPN ranked him the No. 1 player in this spring’s cycle of the transfer portal, and after Louisville and Arizona made their pitches, and after St. John’s had already exited the race by landing Baylor transfer Tounde Yessoufou, Momcilovic picked Kentucky anyway. That’s the story everyone’s writing today. The more interesting one is what a shooter this efficient, at this volume, actually does to a defense that now has to guard him honestly on every possession Mark Pope’s team runs.
There’s a second layer here too. Momcilovic had an NBA-level look at his own game this spring and chose to walk back into a locker room instead. That’s not a small decision for a projected first-rounder in some mocks. It says something about where Pope’s staff has positioned this program that a top-of-market shooter picked it over the alternatives on his list. Recruiting rankings measure talent. They don’t measure what happens to a defense’s rotations when that talent shoots 48.7% instead of hovering around the national average, and that gap is the actual story here.
Why Is a 48.7% Three-Point Shooter So Rare?
Division I players shoot a combined 34% or so from three in a given season, and anything north of 40% on real volume is rare enough to reshape a roster. Momcilovic hit 48.7% while still finishing top five nationally in threes made, a volume-and-efficiency combination almost no shooter manages together.
Most players chasing that much volume watch their percentage slide into the high-30s, because volume and accuracy usually fight each other. Momcilovic never made that trade, and the gap between him and a typical volume shooter is the whole reason Kentucky’s staff prioritized this recruitment.
The rarity compounds when you add size. Momcilovic is a 6-foot-8 junior, and he still managed second-team All-Big 12 honors while averaging 16.9 points per game at Iowa State, a level of recognition that’s harder to earn than it sounds in a conference stacked with pro prospects. He went to the NBA Draft combine this spring, shot around 69% in the shooting drills there, and then withdrew to keep developing in college instead of chasing a two-way contract. A guy hitting nearly seven of ten in a pro gym isn’t chasing a role. He’s choosing one, and he chose Kentucky’s.
What Does Momcilovic Actually Fix for Mark Pope?
Kentucky went 22-14 last season and lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Iowa State, the exact team Pope’s staff would poach from three months later. Momcilovic adds the one thing that roster lacked: a shooter efficient enough that defenses can’t help off him, which frees up driving lanes for everyone else.
Pope is 46-26 in two seasons at Kentucky, a program that hasn’t reached an Elite Eight since 2019 — a drought that predates him but is now his to end, and that matters more at a program built to expect Final Fours than it would almost anywhere else. The fix isn’t just adding a scorer. It’s math. A 34% shooter lets a help defender cheat a step toward the paint on every possession. A 48.7% shooter can’t be given that step, and every possession where the defense has to honor the perimeter is a possession where somebody else on the floor gets an easier look. Momcilovic slots into a projected starting five with Malachi Moreno, a center who also withdrew from the draft to return, plus transfers Alex Wilkins from Furman and Zoom Diallo from Washington. Moreno anchors the rim, Wilkins and Diallo create off the bounce, and Momcilovic makes all of it harder to guard just by standing in the corner. I track my own shooting percentage every weekend at the Berkeley rec center, mostly to torture myself, and I can tell you that 48.7% from three on real volume isn’t something you stumble into. It’s a skill, and Kentucky now owns it for free.
Why Did Kentucky Beat Louisville and Arizona?
Kentucky’s NIL spending, reported by CBS Sports at roughly $6 million for Momcilovic, priced the field out before Louisville or Arizona could seriously counter. That number alone tends to close a recruitment quietly, and a personal endorsement from a Kentucky alum already in the NBA didn’t hurt either.
Tyler Herro, the alum in question, reportedly encouraged Momcilovic to pick Lexington, and hearing that from someone who made the same jump carries more weight than a cold NIL figure when a five-star transfer is weighing legitimate programs. St. John’s had already left the race by the time Kentucky closed, having landed Yessoufou from Baylor to fill the same need, which turned a potential four-team bidding war into a two-team fight Kentucky was built to win. Momcilovic addressed the decision directly on social media:
https://x.com/TheFieldOf68/status/2061629379755560978
Announcing it there instead of through a beat reporter tells you something too. This was a player who knew exactly what the moment was worth and wanted to control how it landed, not a recruit letting a program’s PR staff write the headline for him.
Give me Kentucky as the team nobody wants to run a shooting contest against in March. Momcilovic doesn’t just add points to a box score. He changes what a defense is allowed to do on every trip down the floor, and that’s the kind of value a recruiting ranking was never built to measure.
