Mark Pope’s Kentucky offense is built on one thing above almost everything else: threes. So when the Wildcats landed Milan Momcilovic for the 2026-27 roster, they didn’t just add another shooter. They added a player who put up some of the most eye-popping numbers in the country last season.
Momcilovic spent the 2025-26 season at Iowa State and finished as the Cyclones’ leading scorer at 16.9 points per game. But the real damage came from deep.
He hit 48.7% of his threes on 7.5 attempts per game in the Big 12, a ridiculous clip for that kind of volume. Kentucky got a firsthand look at what he can do when Iowa State knocked the Wildcats out in the Round of 32, with Momcilovic going for 20 points and drilling four threes.
That production would seem to make him the obvious answer in any conversation about the nation’s best shooters. Andy Katz, though, didn’t have him at No.
- On the NCAA March Madness social media pages, Katz ranked Momcilovic third on his list of the top shooters in college basketball this season, and that immediately caught the attention of Big Blue Nation.
The two players Katz placed ahead of him were Providence’s Ryan Sabol and Pryce Sandfort. Sabol arrived at Providence after transferring from Buffalo, where he shot 39.9% from beyond the arc on 9.6 attempts per game last season. Sandfort put up a 41.6% mark while taking 8.9 threes per game during the Cornhuskers’ historic season.
But the raw numbers tell a pretty clear story. Momcilovic went 136-for-279 from three last season.
Sabol finished 122-for-306 at Buffalo, and Sandfort was 129-for-310. All three had excellent shooting seasons, but Momcilovic did it with more makes and far fewer attempts than the other two.
That’s why the debate around his ranking has some Kentucky fans fired up. Momcilovic is expected to take even more threes this season, and the belief is that he can still clear 42% from deep while doing it. If that happens while he’s launching close to 10 attempts per game, the numbers at Kentucky could get loud in a hurry.
For now, the message from the Kentucky side is simple: Momcilovic deserves more respect, and he should arrive in Lexington with plenty of motivation.
In Other News...
Kentuckys New-Look Roster Just Got A Big National Endorsement
CBS Sports writer Isaac Trotters latest positional rankings offered an early sign of how much attention Kentuckys revamped roster is already drawing. Four Wildcats showed up in his breakdown of top college basketball players by role, a notable nod for a team that is still sorting out its identity but clearly has pieces that national observers believe can matter right away.
Zoom Diallo was slotted as an initiator point guard expected to start and run the offense, while Alex Wilkins was tagged as a combo guard and Milan Momcilovic earned the label of the No. 1 off-ball wing. Malachi Moreno rounded out the group as a true 5, giving Kentucky a mix of backcourt creation, perimeter scoring and interior size that should make the coming season worth tracking closely even before the rotation is fully settled. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Fans Have Plenty To Debate About This Kansas Showdown
The Champions Classic is again giving Kentucky fans an early-season measuring stick, and the matchup with Kansas already has the feel of one of those November games people circle well before the first tip. The event will open with Duke and Michigan State at 7:00 p.m. ET before the Wildcats and Jayhawks take the floor later in the night, and presale tickets are already available on Ticketmaster with the code WILDCATS.
For Kentucky, the intrigue goes beyond just another high-profile nonconference game on the schedule. Kansas enters with Bill Self still steering the program after an offseason that had plenty of uncertainty around him, and the Jayhawks also landed Tyran Stokes and Tay Kinney, two names that have been closely tied to Kentucky recruiting conversations, adding another layer to a matchup that already figures to fuel plenty of debate among Wildcats fans. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Landed A Shooter Whose National Respect Still Makes No Sense
Milan Momcilovic arrives in Lexington with the sort of shooting profile Kentucky fans immediately notice, the kind that changes the geometry of a floor before the ball even gets swung his way. He hit 48.7 percent from three and buried 136 triples in the 2025-26 season, both eye-opening numbers that helped make him the No. 3 overall player in the transfer portal and bring an NIL valuation of $6 million with him into Kentuckys orbit.
Even with that resume, national respect for Momcilovic has not exactly matched the production, which only adds another layer to why this addition matters for the Wildcats. He is also chasing a place in Kentuckys record book, and if his touch translates the way it has elsewhere, the conversation around him in Lexington could move quickly from whether he fits to how high he can climb before the season is over. [Read more 🡒]