Kam Williams’ transfer to Kentucky from Tulane did not create a huge buzz in the Bluegrass when he made his decision in late March before the college basketball season even ended.

The 6-foot-8 wing ranked as the 24th best player in the transfer portal and fourth best small forward by 247Sports. He averaged 9.3 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game as a true freshman at Tulane while shooting 48.5% from the field, 41.2% from 3 and 76% at the foul line.

However, before he’s even played a game at UK, he’s been projected as the sixth pick in the 2026 NBA Draft by NBADraft.net to more than justify the potential UK coach Mark Pope and his staff saw immediately in Williams when he went into the transfer portal.

One reason Williams was attracted to UK immediately after leaving Tulane was Kentucky’s history of sending players to the NBA.

“They sent the most pros to the league, so their culture and their coaching is going to help me get to the place that I want to be,” said Williams when he was being projected as a possible late first-round pick in 2026. “My goal is to get to the NBA, so I really thought that coming here could really help me. I just have to keep doing what I’m doing now because that’s what got me here in the first place. There is no point in trying to step out of my comfort zone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Williams understands there are no guarantees about future success and understands what he needs to do this season.

“I can grow in every aspect of basketball because I haven’t perfected anything,” Williams said. “So shooting, defense, IQ, just everything really needs to increase.”

He’s also boosted by the love his father, Greg Williams Sr., has for Kentucky basketball already.

“Really, everyone loves him. He’s doing TikTok dancing and reposting stuff on Twitter and all that,” Williams said. “I’m glad he’s building a bond with BBN early.”

Here are other insights Williams shared about now being at UK:

Question: Have you noticed a difference in BBN and the kind of culture that it is?

Williams: “It’s bigger than a lot of schools, just kind of everybody embraces you. I remember whenever I committed, everybody was like tagging me on Instagram, Twitter, texting me a bunch of stuff. I wasn’t expecting that to happen, but it shows that they really care about their players a lot.”

Question: What was your perception of coach Mark Pope before you got here?

Williams: “I really didn’t know how he was as a coach at first because I was still at my old school and wasn’t really paying attention that much. But now I see that he really is relaxed, cares about his players a lot, loves his guys, and he wants us to be great.”

Question: How good of a shooter are you?

Williams: “I shoot every day, so I try to shoot my best number. I don’t really know what number, but I really work hard a lot at shooting.”

Question: Do you think it will surprise people when they see just how good a shooter you are?

Williams: I would say that most people might kind of doubt the numbers or whatever, but I’m not really worried about the outside noise because I know what I’m capable of. Not gonna try to make it bigger than whatever it is because that’s when doubt and fear and all that comes in. I just want to keep humble, confident.”

Question: Who has helped you the most to develop the shot you have?

Williams: “I started playing basketball at 4, 5 or something like that. Ever since then, my dad has kind of been teaching me different mechanics to help me get my shot perfect. I’m shooting faster now and holding my follow through more.”

Question: Was your dad one of those guys who wouldn’t let you shoot further behind the 3-point or the free-throw line when you were younger so you didn’t mess up your form?

Williams: “I had to stay in the paint. As I got older and got stronger, he let me back up over the years.”

Question: What’s the process for getting up to speed with the Mark Pope system? What are some of the steps that you went through to understand how he coaches?

Williams: “I would say running harder in transition and really picking up on the knowledge that he’s given us. You learn because if you take longer than a day or two to learn certain concepts, then you’re going to fall behind everybody else who’s picking it up. Just being a student of the game is going to help.”

Question: What do you like about Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance? And what do you think that’s going to be like when he gets back to full speed from his knee injury?

Williams: “Like everyone saw last year, when he gets back on the court we will have a player that can really defend the goal for us. I feel like this is going to be a really good defensive team. We can switch one through five, so we can guard everyone. I feel like this team’s gonna be a better defensive team than last year’s team.

“You are not going to drive by Otega (Oweh) or Mo. You are not getting to the goal against them. They are both very strong and burly. I am trying to find different ways to go against them, but it’s not easy.”

Question: What do you expect the transition to UK from Tulane to be like?

Williams: “Really just finding different ways to kind of take driving angles and different closeouts and stuff like that. You know, getting stronger, getting faster because it is a different competition in the SEC than the AAC.”

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Kentucky won its only volleyball national championship in 2020, but coach Craig Skinner’s players believe they have the potential to win another national title this season.

“I think it’s a hard thing to do, but we’re ready to do it this year,” junior libero Molly Tuozzo said. “We’ve already put in so much work and we had the great opportunity to get all of our transfers and freshmen here in the spring and we used that time to grow closer to each other and play for each other.

“We are all so bought into each other and the team that it’s a super exciting year for us. I think we’re not done yet and we just want to keep getting closer and eventually win a national championship.”

Marquette transfer Molly Berezowitz had a sister, Maddie Berezowitz, on UK’s national championship team.

“It’s not going to go perfect. There’s going to be setbacks, but how can we come back from that and have that goal in mind that we want to win the national championship,” Berezowitz said.

Kentucky has won or shared eight straight Southeastern Conference titles. League coaches picked UK No. 1 in the preseason poll and sophomore Asia Thigpen said winning the conference is also important to the team.

“Our expectation this season is to win the SEC championship, both the tournament and the (regular season). I think you check that off and we want to go for a national championship,” Thigpen said.

Returning players got to learn from UK assistant coach Madison Lilley, the nation’s outstanding player when UK won its national championship.

“Mads talked to us about what that looked like in practices,” Thigpen said. “She talked about how every day, it was just competing. She stressed the importance of winning every single drill and then everyone’s roles are super important.”

Skinner doesn’t mind the national championship talk and aspirations. He even admitted he put the schedule together with that in mind.

“Do we schedule tough because we know we have some great players and have a chance to end the year competing for a national championship?” Skinner said. “It is what we typically do, maybe even a little bit tougher, all four of the Final Four teams from last year are on our schedule. But I do not feel like we will get to where we want to go if we don’t play these teams.”

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Former Kentucky all-SEC defensive end Dennis Johnson has had a lot of special sports moments, but was not quite prepared for what happened in Switzerland when he was watching his son Jasper Johnson play for Team USA.

“I am sitting at the very top of the arena and I became great friends with two guys who do all this skiing and stuff in Switzerland,” Dennis Johnson said. “I hear something, but I can’t really make it out way up at the top.

“My son, Skylar, said, ‘Dad, you need to hear these kids.’ I heard them chanting but didn’t know what they were chanting. Skylar sent me some videos and they were chanting for Jasper. Then as we were leaving after the game all these kids had these signs and were waiting for Jasper. It was just crazy.

“These were all kids from Switzerland, but the (USA) players were like celebrities to them and for them to embrace Jasper was just crazy. It was a really great experience for him. Social media is so big now and these young players are celebrities in the minds of all these young kids.”

Jasper Johnson admitted the attention from the young Swiss fans surprised him.

“It definitely surprised me in a whole other country and the little kids knowing who I am,” the UK freshman said. “They were chanting for me. It was a great experience, a great feeling to have people rooting for me like that and maybe even looking up to me. That meant a lot.”

•••

New Mexico State transfer Shiyazh Pete is a “big” part of Kentucky’s rebuilt offensive line that UK coach Mark Stoops is counting on to help the Wildcats bounce back from last year’s 4-8 finish.

The 6-foot-8, 325-pound Pete played in 33 games with 30 starts the last three seasons. His father, Natani, is a captain in the United States Army and is of the Salish/Navajo tribe while his mother, Geraldine, is full-blooded Navajo. He speaks basic Navajo.

He did not have an easy start to his collegiate career. He was a walk-on at New Mexico State who did not play a snap in 2021. Two years later not only was he on scholarship, but he started all 15 games at left tackle for the Aggies when they finished 10-5 and won 34-10 at Auburn.

“That was a game I had been preparing for all season. I just wanted to have fun playing in a SEC stadium where so many great players have played,” Pete said. “I had never been part of anything like that and to outplay them and beat them the way we did was spectacular. I really enjoyed that.”

Pete knows many in the Navajo Nation look up to him because of what he’s already done and hopes to do at Kentucky this year.

“A lot of people reach out to me. It’s a very close-knit community within the Navajo Nation. I’ve had fans come up and introduce themselves,” he said. “I’m recognizing that I’m a public figure, so I have to conduct my business in a professional manner and compete with class.”

Lexington does not have a big Navajo base to embrace Pete.

“I realize there’s really no one else here, but I have a chance to be a representative of our nation in this frontier,” Pete said.

One plus for Pete is that he likes hiking and being outdoors. But his biggest plus could be what he adds to the football team. He missed the first six games last season with a foot injury but allowed just five quarterback pressures and two sacks on 193 pass-blocking plays in the six games he played at left tackle.

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Quote of the Week: “He just told us that if we didn’t win every game, he was going to kill us. And I never knew exactly what that meant. If it was just gonna be kill us, figuratively in practice, or actually kill us. It was probably some grouping of both,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope, on what coach Rick Pitino told UK’s 1995-96 national championship team before the season started.

Quote of the Week 2: “We’re going to have a lot of fun with him. He’s so young, and he’s so capable, and so from him we’re gonna see moments where it’s like he should be in the NBA right now, and we’re gonna see moments where we feel like, I’m not sure he knows exactly what he’s doing. And we’re gonna see both of those, and that’s what growth is,” Mark Pope, on freshman center Malachi Moreno.

Quote of the Week 3: ”I’ve been in the program for five years now. Loyalty is a big thing for me. He’s really a chill guy. He’s a player-led coach and he’s a coach that you can depend on,” safety Jordan Lovett, on what he likes best about coach Mark Stoops.