Longtime college basketball starting guard commits to UK basketball from transfer portal
The transfer portal commitments are coming thick and fast for new Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope.
On Wednesday afternoon, just an hour after UK landed top transfer portal three-point shooter Koby Brea (formerly of Dayton), the Wildcats picked up another portal addition for Pope’s first Kentucky roster.
Kerr Kriisa — a former starting guard at Arizona and West Virginia — has committed to Kentucky from the NCAA transfer portal.
Kentucky officially announced the addition of Kriisa, who has one season of eligibility remaining, in a Thursday news release.
The 6-foot-3, 185-pound Kriisa is originally from Estonia and will arrive in Lexington with four seasons of past college basketball experience. Kriisa spent the first three seasons of his career at Arizona, before entering the transfer portal last offseason and spending the 2023-24 season at West Virginia.
Kriisa, who turned 23 years old in January, entered the transfer portal April 2.
According to ESPN, Pope previously pursued Kriisa while Pope was the head coach at BYU.
Last season, Kriisa played and started in 23 games for the Mountaineers, averaging 11 points and 4.7 assists per game. Kriisa made a career-best 42.4% of his 3-pointers last season on significant shot volume (144 attempts). Kriisa averaged more than 33 minutes played per game for West Virginia, which went a dismal 9-23.
Kriisa had 11 games last season in which he made at least three 3-pointers. In early February, Kriisa scored 23 points against Pope’s BYU team.
“Kerr Kriisa is one of the best shooters in the country,” Pope said in the UK news release. “I feel like I’ve been recruiting him for the last five or six years since he was a prep player. He is one of the most experienced guards in all of college basketball... He has a competitive spirit that overflows in every way conceivable. Kerr will have a massive impact on our team on the court and in the locker room. Kentucky fans are going to love his bold personality.”
Kriisa served a nine-game suspension last season at West Virginia after admitting to accepting impermissible benefits while he was at Arizona.
Per KenPom, Kriisa’s assist rate of 29.1 (calculated as a player’s assists divided by the field goals made by a player’s teammates while the player is on the court) ranked 82nd in the country last season and his 3-point shooting percentage (42.4%) was 80th nationally.
According to college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa, Kriisa is the No. 61 overall transfer portal player.
Last year, Kriisa transferred from Arizona to West Virginia to play for Mountaineers head coach Bob Huggins. But, Huggins resigned from his post before the start of the 2023-24 season following several off-court incidents.
Kriisa re-entered the transfer portal after Huggins’ departure, but chose to remain at West Virginia and play for former WVU assistant coach Josh Eilert, who was elevated to head coach.
Following his freshman season at Arizona (the 2020-21 season) Kriisa had also entered the transfer portal, but he elected to remain at Arizona where he played two more seasons.
Kriisa is the ninth confirmed player on Pope’s Kentucky roster for the 2023-24 season, and the seventh addition from the transfer portal.
The other players who are known to be suiting up for UK next season are first-year guards Collin Chandler and Travis Perry, third-year guard Otega Oweh (Oklahoma), fifth-year guards Koby Brea (Dayton) and Lamont Butler (San Diego State), fifth-year forwards Amari Williams (Drexel) and Andrew Carr (Delaware and Wake Forest) and second-year center Brandon Garrison (Oklahoma State).
Kerr Kriisa is an experienced player with ball distribution, shooting skills
For his college career, Kriisa has per-game averages of 9.7 points and 4.7 assists per contest. He’s a career 78.8% free-throw shooter and a 36.8% career 3-point shooter.
Kriisa has played in 99 career college basketball games and has started 93 of those contests.
Kriisa is from Estonia and played in Lithuania before coming to the United States to play college basketball. His father, Valmo, was a professional basketball player in Estonia. According to his Arizona athletics roster page, Kriisa’s first name, Kerr, is a nod to former Arizona basketball player Steve Kerr, who won several NBA championships as a player with the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and as the current head coach of the Golden State Warriors.
Kriisa was a member of the 2020 recruiting class before enrolling at Arizona and was ranked by the 247Sports Composite as a four-star recruit and the No. 94 overall prospect in that class.
As a freshman at Arizona in the 2020-21 season, Kriisa only played in eight games and wasn’t cleared to play by the NCAA until February of that season.
He started five of those eight games in a season which didn’t feature any postseason basketball for the Wildcats: Arizona self-imposed a one-year postseason ban following an NCAA investigation.
Kriisa was a regular starter for Arizona in both the 2021-22 season (31 starts out of 33 games played) and the 2022-23 season (34 starts out of 35 games played).
Kriisa averaged 9.7 points and 4.7 assists per game during the 2021-22 season, which resulted in Arizona earning a 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and reaching the Sweet 16.
Kriisa averaged 9.9 points and a career-best 5.1 assists per game during the 2022-23 season, which resulted in Arizona earning a 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and losing in the first round to 15 seed Princeton.
Kriisa led the Pac-12 Conference in assists in both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. Kriisa also had two triple-doubles during his time with the Wildcats.
During his college career, Kriisa has shot almost as well from 3-point range (36.8%) as he has from the field overall (37.5%).
Last season, Pope’s BYU team finished second nationally with 32 3-point attempts per game. The Cougars made 34.8% of their 3-pointers and attempted more 3-pointers (50.4%) than 2-pointers (49.6%).
Mark Pope continues to build his first Kentucky basketball roster
Pope essentially has a blank slate from which to construct his first Kentucky basketball roster for next season: All 10 of the underclassmen from the Wildcats’ 2023-24 team have already either declared for the NBA draft or entered the transfer portal.
While Pope continues to do his own work in the transfer portal, the dust has settled when it comes to the playing destinations for all six original members of Kentucky’s 2024 high school recruiting class.
Only one recruit from that group, constructed by former head coach John Calipari, will play for Pope at UK. That’s Travis Perry, an in-state guard and the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky high school boys basketball history.
Three of those recruits — Boogie Fland, Karter Knox and Billy Richmond — have committed to play for former Kentucky coach John Calipari at his new school, Arkansas.
On Monday afternoon, another of those recruits, Jayden Quaintance, announced he would be going to Arizona State. On Monday night, the final recruit from this group, Somto Cyril, committed to Georgia.
College basketball players (including graduate transfers) have until Wednesday to enter the transfer portal.
The early-entry deadline for the 2024 NBA draft was April 27, and players who enter the draft with remaining NCAA eligibility will have until May 29 to remove their names from consideration and return to school.
The transfer portal closes now. Where UK basketball stands, and what’s next for Mark Pope.
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