Kentucky’s frontcourt could look a lot steadier than its backcourt did a year ago, but the Wildcats are still carrying real pressure behind Malachi Moreno.
Moreno is expected to return this season and make a major jump as a sophomore, with his comeback to Lexington bringing true All-SEC expectations after he nearly made a run at a first-round NBA Draft selection. That puts the spotlight squarely on the player backing him up: seventh-year transfer Franck Kepnang.
Kepnang is the lone reserve behind Moreno, and that setup carries some uncomfortable echoes of Kentucky’s point guard situation last season. When Jaland Lowe went down with a shoulder injury before the season, Jasper Johnson was left as the only real option at the one. Mark Pope ended up piecing together the spot with a committee, which led to Denzel Aberdeen playing out of position, Johnson being pushed into a role that didn’t fit as a freshman, and a backcourt that never really settled in.
Kentucky cannot afford that kind of chaos in the paint this year. Even if Moreno stays healthy, the usual SEC foul trouble could make Kepnang far more important than the depth chart suggests when the games start tightening up.
Kepnang has spent most of his career as a support piece, but Lexington asks for something bigger. In his most recent stretch with Washington, he averaged a little over six points, six rebounds and two blocks per game. He also paired with fellow new Wildcat Zoom Diallo in a high-low setup that Kentucky fans would love to see show up again.
Exactly where those numbers land in Lexington is tough to pin down, but Kepnang’s usual 22 minutes could climb, and there will almost certainly be nights when he clears that mark. Between Moreno’s inevitable foul trouble and Pope’s willingness to use Moreno and Kepnang together in a two-center look, the veteran transfer could end up with a much larger workload than expected.
That matters because Kepnang brings a real presence. At 6-foot-11, he plays like a wrecking ball and has built a reputation as one of the more seasoned paint defenders in college basketball. He’s the kind of bruising big man who can absorb contact, protect the rim and survive the kind of SEC games that get messy fast.
Even so, he stands out as one of Pope’s shakier bets from the offseason compared with cleaner additions like Milan Momcilovic and Alex Wilkins. But no roster is flawless, and Kentucky is no stranger to rolling the dice.
After more than a decade of John Calipari leaning on freshmen year after year, Wildcats fans should probably welcome the idea of a seventh-year transfer stepping in to support one of the sport’s fastest-rising centers.
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