Kentucky Basketball: More good vibes for UK landing Reid Travis

The watch for Reid Travis continues, and everything continues to look great for the Kentucky Wildcats.

UK head coach John Calipari is now following Travis on Twitter, something he usually does for close friends and current/former players.

Travis begin his visit to UK early Tuesday morning, and by all accounts, it’s gone as good as UK could have hoped for.

The latest from KSR’s TJ Walker bodes very well for UK landing Travis:

At this point (10:25 p.m.) we can’t confirm that he’s enrolled at UK, but Kentucky Sports Radio is confident that it will happen in the near future (if it already hasn’t happened). I don’t expect Travis to make any other visits and I would anticipate a commitment to Kentucky very soon.

Travis is not only one of the top available players out there this offseason, but he’s also one of the best graduate transfers college basketball has ever seen. Granted, we’ve only seen grad transfers occurring widespread for less than a decade now, but that doesn’t take away from just how big of a get Travis would be for whoever lands him.

Travis was a four-star prospect in the 2014 class. In his final season with the Stanford Cardinal, he averaged 19.5 points and 8.7 rebounds per game. He averaged double-figure scoring in three of his four seasons at Stanford, and averaged a career-high 8.9 rebounds in 2016-17.

Part of what makes Travis so dangerous is his ability to space the floor and make an impact in a variety of ways. He attempted 61 three-pointers last season at Stanford and hit 18 of them. That’s only 29.5-percent shooting, but it came after Travis attempted just one three previously.

With another year of refinement, Travis could become a bigger threat there, which would go a long way toward getting him drafted in 2019, not to mention make whichever team he picks even more dangerous.

Think of how much Patrick Patterson improved as a three-point shooter in his junior year after it was nonexistent his first two years in Lexington. Perhaps that’s why he wants to UK, to be used in more ways than he ever was at Stanford.

Thankfully, UK has plenty of shooters to space out the floor next season and allow Travis to be a force in the paint like he was at Stanford. I would guess UK is selling him on being more active on the perimeter, though, in order to help fit him in with an already-talented frontcourt that includes EJ Montgomery, PJ Washington and Nick Richards.

Think of those four together along with the insanely-deep and talented backcourt UK already has...

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