Kahlil Whitney leaving Kentucky

Kahlil Whitney is leaving the Kentucky Wildcats, he announced Friday.

Reading between the lines of Whitney’s tweet, he made sure to say ‘leaving’ and not ‘transferring.’ He also mentioned how he’s become an ‘elite’ player, so perhaps he thinks he can play professionally somewhere this year and is getting a jumpstart on preparing for the pros.

Still, my guess is he transfers to a different college like Illinois, who came in second place in his recruitment.

This is a major shocker, as there’s still plenty of season left for Whitney to carve out a role for this team, but it appears he’s ready to move on to something different at a new school or perhaps overseas.

To this point, Whitney was averaging 3.3 points, 1.7 rebounds and 0.4 assists on 37.1% shooting. He’s made just one field goal over his last seven games and has played less than 10 minutes in five of his last seven games.

Even so, Whitney has a lot of potential that would have hopefully been realized later this season or as a sophomore in 2020-21, but alas, he didn’t think it was worth trying to make it work here.

Now, Kentucky is left with essentially eight scholarship players to finish out the season unless Dontaie Allen can eventually play. With over two months of the season left, it’s going to be very challenging to survive with that thin of a roster, especially with the kind of injury luck Kentucky has had in recent years.

As if John Calipari needed any more reason to never go into a season with just 10 scholarship players, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Hopefully, Whitney finds happiness wherever his next adventure takes him. By all accounts, he’s a great kid who just wants to become the best version of himself. Here’s to hoping we see that play out.

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