Start with a number: 48.7.
That was Milan Momcilovic’s three-point percentage a year ago, best in the country, and he reached it while launching enough attempts to make 136 threes, also best in the country. Those two titles rarely belong to the same player. Volume shooters tend to bleed accuracy, and accurate shooters tend to be careful with their attempts. Momcilovic did neither, and now he carries that number into Rupp Arena, where Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats open their season at 7PM ET against Manhattan.
The senior has not played a minute of regular-season basketball for Kentucky, yet his name is already on the Naismith Trophy preseason watch list, one of 50 on the ballot for national player of the year. His October gave the voters nothing
to second-guess. Across three exhibitions he led Kentucky at 16.7 points a game, which comes to about 50 points total. He hit 9 of 20 from three and 15 of 31 from the field, and he never missed at the line, going 11 for 11. He added 5.7 rebounds a night, a reminder that he is not just a spot-up threat.
The résumé was already thick when he arrived from Iowa State, where his 260 career threes rank second in school history. Preseason lists have kept stacking up since. CBS Sports, 247Sports and Sports Illustrated each tabbed him a preseason All-American. The SEC’s coaches and its media both slotted him on the preseason all-league team. He is also on the Julius Erving Award watch list and the NABC Player of the Year list.
The Naismith watch list is also a map of where the sport’s power sits, and it tilts toward Momcilovic’s new neighborhood. The SEC accounts for 15 of the 50 names, 30 percent of the field and more than any other league. The Big Ten and Big 12 have 10 apiece, the ACC has nine, the Big East four and the Pac-12 two. Florida alone has three players on it. Kentucky has one.
That lone entry is the point. Momcilovic won’t be one of several scoring threats a defense must respect on a given night. He’s the one every defense will plan around, and in the SEC the plans get smarter and the closeouts longer as winter goes on. Exhibition shooting tells you a player is healthy and in rhythm. It does not tell you what he does in February, when the scouting report is memorized and every screen is switched.
Tonight won’t answer that, and nobody should expect it to. Manhattan is the first page of a long season, and the Naismith race is decided on the road in January, not at home in November. But the opening game is when a watch list starts turning into a résumé, and Momcilovic walks into it with a stat line, a scouting report and a number that every defender in the league knows by now.
2026-27 Naismith Trophy Men’s College Player of the Year Watch List
This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: The number behind Milan Momcilovic’s Naismith push
