The Kentucky Wildcats are on the board, this time landing a commitment from international big man Ousmane N’Diaye. It was actually announced by UK Sports Network on Friday and retweeted by the Kentucky men’s basketball Twitter handle, meaning the news was effectively broken by UK.
N’Diaye is a 22-year-old from Senegal who stands 6-foot-11 and weighs 210 pounds. Playing overseas for Vanoli Cremona this past season in Lega Basket Serie A, N’Diaye averaged 10.2 points on 42.1% shooting from the field (32.1% on 5.0 attempts per game), 6.7 rebounds, 0.9 steals, 0.7 assists, and 0.5 blocks in 27.3 minutes per game.
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One hurdle Kentucky must clear is getting N’Diaye eligible for next season, as the NCAA has not yet made a ruling on him. However, KSR’s Jacob Polacheck says his sources are confident that clearance will eventually be granted. Kentucky clearly feels the same way if Mark Pope is willing to take a commitment now with other options still available, and that’s before the 5-in-5 NCAA ruling could open up another wave of transfer portal entries.
In 2016, N’Diaye began gaining national attention as a 12-year-old who participated in a Basketball Without Borders camp, where former Wildcats Eric Bledsoe was a coach.
Then in 2020, N’Diaye had a strong performance at another Basketball Without Borders camp, so much that he was called one of the camp’s top standouts by ESPN’s Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz.
The 15-year-old N’diaye stood out as one of the best long-term prospects we evaluated while playing on loan with Bayern Munich, winning MVP of Szent Istvan, an under-16 tournament in Hungary. A long-armed 6-9 forward with outstanding footwork and fluid athleticism, N’diaye averaged 21.8 points, 16.5 rebounds and 2.8 steals in 30.2 minutes. He’s still learning how to play on both ends of the floor and tends to rely too much on off-balance jumpers, but he shows enough promise as a ball-handler and shotmaker to instill confidence that he can be more than just a run-and-jump athlete.
Kentucky still has a lot of work to do with roster construction, but this looks like a big-time get for a frontcourt that desperately needed a shot in the arm, especially coming off the recent Donnie Freeman drama. N’Diaye is big enough to play the 5 but has enough shooting capability to play the 4 spot, where the Wildcats severely lacked shooting this past season.
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Check out the newest Wildcat in action below!
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