Will Mark Pope have any NBA picks next year? The 2025 mock drafts are already posted.

For the past decade and a half, the University of Kentucky men’s basketball program has been synonymous with the NBA draft.

Following the second day of the 2024 edition — with Antonio Reeves being chosen No. 47 overall — the final tally of the John Calipari era stood at 50 picks in 15 years, an unprecedented run that featured three No. 1 overall selections and 25 lottery picks, with Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham joining the latter list Wednesday night.

And now that the 2024 draft is in the books, several national outlets have already posted their initial 2025 NBA mock drafts. What will draft night look like moving forward, with Mark Pope settling in as the new coach of the Wildcats after Calipari’s departure for Arkansas?

Pope isn’t expected to tally the same number of picks as Calipari — there’s never been a draft résumé quite like the one the former UK coach compiled — but the Cats’ new leader isn’t shying away from the process either.

“That’s been a mainstay of Kentucky basketball since the beginning of time,” Pope said at an NIL event earlier this month, noting the nine players from his 1995-96 squad that later played in the NBA. “... So this brilliant relationship between Kentucky basketball and the NBA is something that’s been really, really longstanding. And I think it’s a vital, important part of — I think it’s actually, for us, a manifestation of the success that we have here. And when you see teams win — and win at the highest level — it’s because they have great players, and it’s because their players become great.”

A glance at the first 2025 mock drafts don’t show much in the way of immediate expectations, from a pro prospective.

Pope’s first UK roster — currently with 12 scholarship players — is filled completely with newcomers. All of the Wildcats from Calipari’s final team will play elsewhere next season.

Once Pope and his coaching staff settle into their UK recruiting perch, it’s likely that more clear-cut NBA prospects will join the program for future seasons, but that will take some time.

ESPN’s 2025 mock draft, which was posted Friday morning, did not have any Kentucky players among the 58 picks for next year. Other 2025 mock drafts posted this week — from Yahoo Sports, USA Today and SB Nation — also featured zero Wildcats, though all three of those lists included only 30 total picks. (ESPN was the only full, two-round mock draft.)

The CBS Sports mock draft — compiled by 247Sports analysts Adam Finkelstein and Travis Branham — projected UK newcomer Jaxson Robinson as the No. 21 overall pick to the Golden State Warriors.

“Robinson is a sizey wing who drills shots from beyond the arc,” the analysts wrote in that one. “Every NBA team knows he can shoot the ball from 3, but next season they want to see improved strength, toughness and proof Robinson can impact the game beyond shooting jumpers.”

Robinson was Pope’s leading scorer at BYU last season and pulled out of the 2024 draft — where he was projected as a possible second-round pick — to transfer to Kentucky and play his final year of college basketball for the Wildcats. The 6-foot-7 guard is the only player on this UK roster that Pope has coached in the past.

Of course, take all of this with a grain of salt.

The 2025 NBA draft is still a year away, and a full season of college basketball will unfold before those selections are made. This time last year, few, if any, serious basketball analysts would have projected Sheppard would have even been selected after just one season at UK. He went No. 3 overall to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, and the Kentucky native was No. 1 on some reputable boards going into draft night.

Along with Robinson, sophomore center Brandon Garrison and freshman guard Collin Chandler are among the other UK newcomers mentioned as possible future draft picks (though not necessarily next year). And Pope and his coaching staff have already cast a wide net with five-star recruiting targets in future classes.

He has said that getting players to the NBA will remain a serious objective for the program, which had 18 total picks — and 13 first-rounders — under Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and Billy Gillispie, before Calipari came to town. That list includes Pope, who was the No. 52 pick in the 1996 draft.

“And so I think our relationship with the NBA will — if we do our jobs well, and our guys do (their) jobs well — then it’s going to continue in massive earnest,” he said. “Just like it did — clearly like it did — with Cal. And with Tubby. And with Coach P. And Joe B. (Hall). And so hopefully we’ll continue down that road. It’s a really important part of what we do.”

Calipari’s NBA draft future

John Calipari was in Brooklyn on Wednesday night to watch Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham go in the lottery, and he’s expected to remain a player on NBA draft nights in the future.

Calipari had at least one first-round pick in every draft as Kentucky’s coach — and the streak extends to 17 years when counting his final two Memphis seasons — but that could end in 2025.

The ESPN mock draft does not have any Arkansas players among its top 30 picks, though Adou Thiero, who spent the past two seasons at UK, is No. 32 overall. The ESPN projections also have former Kentucky big man Zvonimir Ivisic at No. 44 on the 2025 list. Missing from the full, 58-pick mock draft are ex-UK point guard D.J. Wagner — once ranked as the No. 1 recruit in his class — and all three of the former Wildcats recruits who followed Calipari to Fayetteville (Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond).

Other analysts are more bullish on some of those players.

The Yahoo Sports mock draft has three Razorbacks going in the first round: Wagner (No. 11), Fland (No. 12) and Knox (No. 18). SB Nation has Fland at No. 20, and USA Today has Knox at No. 16 and Thiero at No. 28.

CBS Sports does not feature any Arkansas players in the first round.

Duke freshman Cooper Flagg — projected as a generational talent from Maine — is No. 1 overall on all of those mock drafts. Rutgers freshman wing Ace Bailey — the No. 2 recruit in the 2024 class — is projected as the second overall pick on each list.

Fifteen years, 50 picks. A history of UK basketball players drafted in the Calipari era.

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