Kentucky basketball’s Mark Pope lands starting guard from recent Final Four team

A key player on a recent national runner-up squad will be playing his final college basketball season at Kentucky.

On Friday afternoon, former San Diego State guard Lamont Butler committed to Kentucky out of the NCAA transfer portal. Butler, a 6-foot-2 guard, had played the last four seasons with the Aztecs.

Butler, who turns 22 next month, will join new Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s first roster in Lexington as one of the most experienced players in college basketball: Butler played in 131 career games at San Diego State and started 102 of those contests.

He has one season of college eligibility left.

Butler has been a regular starter for the Aztecs in each of the last three seasons, including all 37 games last season and in 38 of the 39 games that SDSU played in the 2022-23 season, when the Aztecs reached the national championship game.

Across his four seasons of college basketball experience, Butler boasts per-game averages of 7.7 points, 2.6 assists, 2.3 rebounds and 1.4 steals. Butler is a career 32.1% 3-point shooter who has made 104 of 324 career attempts from deep.

Butler is known more for his defensive exploits than his offensive ones: Butler won the last two Mountain West defensive player of the year awards. He’s a career 41.2% shooter from the field and 67.5% shooter from the foul line.

During the 2022-23 season, when SDSU reached the national championship game as a 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Butler made 38 starts and played in all 39 games. He had per-game averages of 8.8 points, 3.2 assists and 2.7 rebounds that season.

Last season, Butler averaged 9.3 points (a career high), 3.0 assists and 2.6 rebounds for an Aztecs team that was also a 5 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament and reached the Sweet 16.

Per KenPom, Butler’s steal percentage (3.3%) ranked 119th in the nation last season. His assist rate (21.6) was also one of the top marks nationally.

In each of the last three seasons, Butler has averaged at least 25 minutes played per game and at least 1.5 steals per game.

While Butler is known for his exploits as a perimeter defender, it was a moment of offensive genius that has already made him a memorable college basketball figure.

Butler hit a game-winning, buzzer-beating shot in the 2023 Final Four to lift San Diego State past Florida Atlantic in a national semifinal in Houston.

“Lamont Butler is the definition of a winner,” Pope said in a Saturday news release announcing Butler’s signing. “He might be the best perimeter defensive player in all of college basketball. Lamont has helped lead championship teams for the last four years and hit one of the most epic shots in the NCAA Tournament to send his team to the championship game.

According to college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa, Butler is ranked as the No. 59 overall player in the transfer portal, as of Friday afternoon.

Butler was originally a three-star recruit in the 2020 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite. He picked San Diego State over scholarship offers from Colorado, Harvard, Saint Mary’s and Washington, among others.

Butler is one of five players now lined up to play for Pope’s first Kentucky team during the 2024-25 season.

He joins first-year guards Collin Chandler and Travis Perry, third-year guard Otega Oweh (formerly of Oklahoma) and fifth-year forward Amari Williams, who was Pope’s first transfer portal pickup as Kentucky’s head coach.

Williams committed to UK last weekend after playing four seasons at Drexel. Oweh committed to UK on Saturday.

MARK POPE BUILDS HIS FIRST KENTUCKY BASKETBALL ROSTER

Pope — the former head coach at BYU and Utah Valley and a key member of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team — is constructing his first UK basketball roster from scratch.

Aaron Bradshaw (Ohio State), Joey Hart (Ball State) and Zvonimir Ivisic (Arkansas) are players from the 2023-24 Kentucky squad that will transfer to new schools. Additionally, Jordan Burks, Ugonna Onyenso, Adou Thiero and D.J. Wagner are still in the NCAA transfer portal.

Thiero has a return to Kentucky among his final five options. The other schools on his list are Arkansas (where he’d rejoin Calipari), Indiana, North Carolina and Pittsburgh.

Also from last season’s team, Rob Dillingham, Justin Edwards, and Reed Sheppard have declared for the 2024 NBA draft. Tre Mitchell and Antonio Reeves have exhausted their college eligibility.

From the 2024 Kentucky recruiting class that was assembled by former head coach John Calipari, five of the six players who were committed to UK reopened their college recruitments.

Three of them — Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond — have announced plans to follow Calipari to Arkansas, where he now coaches the Razorbacks. Somto Cyril and Jayden Quaintance have yet to announce their new college plans, while the aforementioned Perry will still be in Lexington next season.

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