Kerr Kriisa joins UK basketball with bravado, but what are his on-court expectations?

By now, you’ve likely heard about the reputation Kerr Kriisa has brought with him to Lexington as one of nine transfer portal additions to Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball team.

The fifth-year guard — born in Estonia and formerly a standout at both Arizona and West Virginia — has serious swagger, with significant trash-talking bravado and a distinct personality.

“He’s just nuts,” new UK assistant coach Cody Fueger told the Herald-Leader this offseason about Kriisa, a 6-foot-2 guard who has previously played in 99 college basketball games.

While stories of Kriisa’s brash nature and colorful personality have already made headlines as he begins his UK career, there’s also plenty to be said about what Kriisa projects to bring statistically to the Wildcats next season.

Kriisa is coming off a career year at West Virginia, which came amid less than ideal circumstances following the departure of former Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins. The Estonian posted career bests in points scored (11.0 per game), 3-point shooting (42.4%), overall shooting (42.9%) and minutes played (33.5 per contest) in 23 games, all starts, for the Mountaineers.

Prior to this, Kriisa enjoyed a stellar three-year career at Arizona during which he was a regular starter on teams that earned a 1 seed and a 2 seed in consecutive NCAA tournaments. He led the Pac-12 Conference in assists for both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.

(Kriisa also served a nine-game suspension last season at West Virginia after admitting to accepting impermissible benefits while he was at Arizona.)

The 23-year-old’s antics might fuel narratives, but Kriisa is a polished basketball player with proven skill at the high-major level.

Now, the question is how will Kriisa be able to translate this on a UK team full of newcomers?

“The whole (coaching) staff, everybody has got so much knowledge and experience, and it’s just awesome to be like a student of the game. You know?” Kriisa said. “You learn every day. You go to practice, you know you’re going to get better, not only on the floor, but also mentally learning some new aspects of the game that you never really have even thought about.”

Kerr Kriisa leads Kentucky basketball newcomers in offensive projections

According to college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa, Kriisa projects to have the third-best Bayesian Performance Rating (BPR) — which is defined as “the ultimate measure of a player’s overall value to his team when he is on the floor” — of the nine transfer portal additions Pope has landed this offseason.

Kriisa’s projected BPR of 4.55 trails only fifth-year forward Andrew Carr (4.98) and third-year guard Otega Oweh (4.76) in projected performance for the Wildcats next season.

And when looking only at Miyakawa’s projected Offensive Bayesian Performance Rating (OBPR) for next season — which “reflects the offensive value a player brings to his team when he is on the court” — no incoming UK player grades out better than Kriisa.

Per Miyakawa, Kriisa projects to have an OBPR of 3.91 next season, which means that UK projects to be nearly four offensive points per 100 possessions better than the Division I average when Kriisa is on the floor, assuming he is surrounded by nine other average players.

The next closest Wildcat in Miyakawa’s OBPR projections is Carr at 3.57.

“West Virginia had a down year last year and a lot of that is not (Kriisa’s) fault, because you had an offseason coaching debacle with Bob Huggins leaving and because of that they lost a lot of pieces,” said Miyakawa, who has Kriisa ranked as the 62nd-best transfer in the portal this offseason, as well as the 18th-best transfer when it comes to OBPR.

“(Kentucky) is supposed to be really good. Even with West Virginia having a down year, (Kriisa) actually, in moving to an even tougher conference in the Big 12, and West Virginia and his teammates not being that good around him, he actually improved in almost every single box stat compared to his final year at Arizona, where he was a good player.”

In February, Pope got an up-close look at the offensive production Kriisa is capable of. In an 86-73 BYU win over West Virginia, Kriisa accounted for 23 points and four assists while making five 3-pointers against Pope’s Cougars.

Kriisa’s distance shooting ability, in particular, fuels his offensive ceiling with the Wildcats: He’s a career 36.8% 3-point shooter and has averaged at least 2.4 made 3s per game in each of the last three seasons.

This is expected to pair well with Pope’s 3-point heavy offensive approach: Last season, BYU finished second nationally with 32 3-point attempts per game, and Kentucky has the goal of attempting 35 shots from 3-point range, per game, next season.

“He makes an impressive amount of 3s, especially for having the ball so much in his hands,” Miyakawa said. “He made over 40% of his (3-point) shots on six attempts per game, which is a lot. He also averaged close to five assists (4.7) per game too, which means he’s always making plays for other people. So really, offensively, I’ve always been a big believer in Kerr Kriisa, and I think that if he’s set up with better players around him, I think he’s going to really thrive offensively at Kentucky.”

“Coach Pope is obviously very offensive-minded … So it’s fun to shoot the ball a lot,” added Kriisa, who noted that the style of offense Pope has implemented at UK reminds him of the Arizona offense run by coach Tommy Lloyd that Kriisa was part of.

“… You’re not like in a square, you know. You make your own reads with your teammates, depending on how the defense plays … Literally everything is reads.”

With Kriisa, there’s an acknowledgment that, at times, things will go off script. A run-of-the-mill offensive possession could end in a made 3 from Kriisa, as plenty did last season, or it could end in a befuddling turnover: Kriisa averaged a career-worst 2.9 turnovers per game last season at WVU.

That’s part of the show with Kriisa, who is set to become the first player born in Estonia to suit up in a game for the Wildcats.

“Between his sort of eccentric demeanor, and the fact that he can sometimes make some poorly executed plays, those are always going to be the most eye-catching things about him,” Miyakawa said. “But I think beyond that, my statistical models have always been way higher on him than most people have been.”

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