Tyler Ulis says Reed Sheppard and Tre Mitchell have been biggest surprises for Kentucky Basketball

If anyone knows what it takes to be a special player at Kentucky, it's former superstar point guard Tyler Ulis.

In an interview with Kentucky Sports Radio, Ulis talked about this year’s Kentucky Wildcats and his early thoughts.

“They’re basketball players. Hoopers. Pure hoopers, all of them. And they love the game,” Ulis said.

However, later in the interview, Ulis was asked if there had been any surprises about this group that he didn’t initially expect.

After what we all saw during the team’s trip to Canada, none of us should be surprised that Ulis mentioned Reed Sheppard and Tre Mitchell as surprises for him.

“Reed surprised me with how good he was early. Not really a surprise because he’s a McDonald’s All-American, but Reed has been really good all year,” Ulis said. “The biggest surprise to me was Tre because I’ve never seen him play. He transferred in and the hype was around all of the guys we had coming in, guys coming back. Tre, I think, just made things gel and mesh really well. With his ability to space the floor and his reads, he plays the game really smart, and he’s a really good player.”

To take it a step further, Ulis believes that Mitchell is going to bring something to the center position that we haven’t really seen under Cal, spacing, and an ability to play through him.

“I think Tre is a big piece for us, being able to space the floor,” he added. “Making reads, he’s a guy you can play through. That really surprised me. That’s going to be great for us, having a five like that. I don’t think we’ve had that here ever, honestly. Karl (Towns) could’ve shot threes, but he didn’t.”

He continued, “This year having a guy who is spacing the floor and bringing bigs out of the paint, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

You can check out everything Ulis had to say in the interview below.