Milan Momcilovic Picks Kentucky: How the Wildcats Just Landed the Portal’s Best Shooter
Kentucky just won the transfer portal. The Wildcats landed Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic this week, ending a month-long recruiting battle and giving Mark Pope the shooter his offense desperately needed.
Momcilovic is the best pure shooter to enter the portal this cycle and one of the most efficient catch-and-shoot threats in the country. The 6-7 wing averaged 16.9 points per game as a junior at Iowa State while leading the nation in three-point percentage at 48.7. That is not a typo. He hit nearly half of his threes on real volume against Big 12 defenses.
For Kentucky, this is the move that turns a roster that looked okay into a roster that could legitimately compete for a national title. Pope’s system needs spacing. It needs guys who can hit a pull-up three off a swing pass. It needs the gravity that pulls a defense’s attention away from the bigs working in the paint. Momcilovic gives him all of it.
The recruiting process was the kind of thing that drives coaches to drink. Momcilovic took his time. He visited multiple schools. He flirted with both Kansas and Duke. There was even some thinking earlier in the spring that he might return to Iowa State if the right NIL deal materialized. None of it happened. Kentucky stayed patient, kept the offer on the table, and closed.
The fit is what makes this so important. Pope’s offense at BYU produced a top-15 three-point shooting unit every year he was in Provo. He brought that same system to Lexington. His first season had moments, but the team lacked a true elite shooter to put real fear into defenses. Momcilovic is that guy. Defenses now have to choose between guarding him 25 feet from the rim or living with the consequences.
Combine Momcilovic with whatever Kentucky brings back from last year, plus the freshmen Pope already has committed, and the projected roster looks like a top-10 team in the country. The Wildcats had been listed in some preseason polls outside the top 15 before this move. That changes now.
The bigger story is what this commitment says about the new state of the portal. Top-tier transfers like Momcilovic are now operating like NBA free agents. They take meetings. They wait for the best offer. They sign late. The schools that are most disciplined about chasing the right fit are the ones that win these battles. Kentucky did exactly that.
The other angle worth tracking is what this does to Iowa State. The Cyclones lose their best player. They have to compensate through their own portal additions. They have done it before, but losing Momcilovic stings, because he was the kind of homegrown development success that programs at Iowa State’s level are built on.
For Kentucky, the rebuild that Mark Pope inherited just took a major step forward. The Wildcats are not yet what John Calipari’s roster used to look like, with one-and-done future lottery picks at every position. They are turning into something different. A team built around modern shooting, smart guard play, and tournament-ready depth. Momcilovic is the centerpiece of that vision.
Final answer arrives in March. For now, Kentucky just won June.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
