Braydon Hawthorne’s Kentucky debut came with the kind of flashes that make teammates lean in and start reaching for big comparisons.
After the Wildcats rolled past Manhattan 85-57 to open the season, senior wing Milan Momcilovic said Hawthorne “Just kind of reminds me of Kevin Durant a little bit,” adding, “Obviously he’s still working a lot, but he’s gonna be really good for us.”
Momcilovic wasn’t putting Hawthorne on Durant’s level. Still, the resemblance he was talking about was easy to spot.
Both are long, thin wings who can use that frame to create problems for defenders. Hawthorne didn’t fill up the box score like a star in his first official college game Tuesday night in Rupp Arena, but he delivered enough eye-catching moments to make the comparison feel understandable.
He finished with eight points, five rebounds, four assists, and two blocks in 19 minutes against Manhattan. And the highlights came in a rush: blocking layups off the glass, getting a hand on three-point attempts, and finishing putback dunks.
Hawthorne, a skinny 6-foot-8 wing, had been uneven during the preseason, though he showed some of that upside in Kentucky’s third and final exhibition against UCF. Against Manhattan, he flashed it even more.
The public hadn’t seen any of this in person before because Hawthorne sat out the entire 2025-26 season as a redshirt. Momcilovic, though, got a front-row look all offseason while the two regularly matched up in practice. He said he knew Hawthorne could be special when the young wing started swatting away his shots in the summer.
“I was just like, damn, he’s got a seven-five wingspan, so he honestly makes me a lot better in practice,” Momcilovic said. “Just because I got to find a way to get (my shot) off quicker, get it off around him because he’s so long.
So, we have a lot of good matchups in practice, but I mean, he does a lot of good things for us out there. He just uses length very well.
Tip dunks, blocks. He had a couple nice mid-posts.”
Hawthorne’s length and athleticism are already obvious. What will take him from intriguing to indispensable is the shot.
He went 4-for-8 from the field against Manhattan, but missed all four of his three-point tries after going 3-for-7 from deep across three preseason games. If that part of his game comes along, the minutes should follow.
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