BOOMSHELL: Kentucky is minutes away from landing an elite defensive stopper or suffering another portal heartbreak

BOOMSHELL: Kentucky is minutes away from landing an elite defensive stopper or suffering another portal heartbreak

BOOMSHELL: Kentucky is minutes away from landing an elite defensive stopper or suffering another portal heartbreak
We are officially on the clock, BBN. As wild as portal season, it is about to get even wilder.

Mark Pope is nearing the first of what will be several major Transfer Portal decisions. In just a couple of hours, San Diego State transfer Miles Byrd is going to publicly announce his next destination. All signs point to a two-horse race between Kentucky and Baylor.

Will Mark Pope be able to close on the former Aztec star? Or will Kentucky basketball suffer another recruiting heartbreak?

Miles Byrd is an elite defensive stopper and Kentucky needs those
If you look at the profile Pope has been filling up the recruiting board with, Byrd is the prototype.

At 6-foot-6 and 190 pounds, the senior is an absolute menace on the perimeter. He brings the exact kind of nasty, physical edge that Kentucky lacked last season. Byrd is a former Mountain West Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He knows how to completely lock down an opposing team’s best perimeter weapon, averaging nearly two steals and a block per game over the last two seasons.

Offensively, he isn’t going to light it up from deep (shooting around 30 percent from beyond the arc for his career), but he still manages to fill up the stat sheet. He attacks the rim, facilitates the ball, and uses his length to crash the glass. He is the ultimate glue guy, something Kentuky also didn’t have much of last season.

But Scott Drew is the mountain in the way.

The Baylor momentum

Kentucky desperately needs a defensive stopper to help kick off the portal signings. But right now, the rumors flying around the recruiting circles are not great news if you are a Kentucky fan.

As we inch closer to the announcement time later today, the whispers are getting louder that Baylor is gaining serious momentum and is likely the team to beat. Ironically, Scott Drew was the coach that Kentucky pegged to replace John Calipari before he decided to stay at Baylor. And now he is about to stick it to the Cats one again. The thought of losing out on a premier defensive target to the Bears at the eleventh hour isn’t great.

Pope needs a win. The fan base needs a win. We are just hours away from finding out if the staff can hold off the late Baylor push and finally get some positive momentum rolling in Lexington.