Kentucky beefs up frontcourt with commitment from transfer center
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Kentucky earned a huge transfer portal win in its frontcourt for the 2026-27 season, or at least head coach Mark Pope hopes he has.
Washington transfer center Franck Kepnang has committed to Kentucky for next season. But there’s a caveat to all of the excitement surrounding the 6-foot-11, 253-pound Cameroon native, because he is not yet eligible for next season. Kepnang has been in college since the 2020-21 season, when he was at Oregon.
Ironically, Kepnang was briefly recruited out of high school by John Calipari to come to Kentucky, and now all these years later it appears the big man will be playing in front of Big Blue Nation next season. But that’s assuming Kepnang can earn multiple medical redshirts from 3 seasons that were heavily hampered by injuries. Success in doing that would give him 1 more season of eligibility to spend at Kentucky.
Kepnang appeared in just 8 games during the 2022-23 season after transferring to Washington, only 10 games in the 2023-24 season and just 14 games during the 2024-25 season. Kentucky fans are hoping that all that missed time will translate into another season of eligibility in 2026-27, when he would certainly help Pope’s program that’s trying desperately to return to relevance.
The center appeared in 27 games this past season at Washington, averaging 6.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks in about 23 minutes per game. But injuries reared their ugly head again for Kepnang, who missed the final 6 games of the season because of knee soreness.
Kepnang has battled injuries throughout his college career, tearing his ACL in December of 2022 before suffering another season-ending knee injury the following season. More injuries followed in the 2024-25 season, which sidelined Kepnang for more than 2 months of the regular season.
All the injuries limited Kepnang to 32 games over a 3-year span, but Kentucky hopes all of his injuries are behind him and that he can have a clean bill of health next season — if he is indeed allowed to play for the Wildcats.
Kentucky is trying to build back up to what it used to be, which is an annual contender to get to the Final Four. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the top teams in the mix to be playing for everything next April:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
