Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope walks onto the court Thursday, March 27, 2025, during practice ahead of the Sweet 16 March Madness tournament game against the Tennessee Volunteers at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Kentucky has the most underrated frontcourt in all of college basketball

Originally posted on Kentucky Wildcats on SI
By Andrew Stefaniak | Last updated Sep 19, 2025 3:00 PM ET

The college basketball season is right around the corner, and not a lot of Kentucky fans are talking about the frontcourt on this basketball team. The only player who is back from last season is Brandon Garrison, but the rest of this frontcourt is brand new.

College basketball analysts seem to have a lot of belief in Jaland Lowe, Otega Oweh, Denzel Aberdeen, and the rest of this backcourt, but there isn't as much belief in the frontcourt.

Part of the concern with this frontcourt is the fact that star center Jayden Quaintance is fighting back from an injury, but this is a very deep frontcourt. The Wildcats have three solid centers in Quaintance, Garrison, and freshman five-star Malachi Moreno. They also have two great power forwards in Alabama transfer Mo Dioubate and Croatian Andrija Jelavic.

Garrison, Dioubate, and Quaintance are the three members of this frontcourt who have played some college basketball, which will benefit them a lot.

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Moreno, alongside Garrison, is going to play a lot of extra minutes while the Wildcats await the return of Quaintance, and this means these two are going to be very important in some of Kentucky's marquee non-conference matchups.

Dioubate and Jelavic are going to give Kentucky a massive upgrade at power forward from last season. Jelavic is an offensive specialist as he is a lights-out shooter and can handle the ball. While he is a better offensive player, he isn't too shabby on the defensive end.

Dioubate is similar in an opposite way, as he is one of the best defenders in the SEC, but he is also not any kind of liability on the offensive side of the floor.

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Kentucky has a frontcourt full of elite talent, and they are deep. Once Quaintance is back to 100% and Jelavic has gotten used to playing college basketball, this unit is going to be quite scary.

Kentucky's frontcourt is not being discussed as one of the better frontcourts in college basketball, but once it is at full strength and gels well together, this frontcourt will be tough to stop.

Coach Pope did an excellent job scanning the transfer portal and the globe to put together this frontcourt that has a lot of high-level athletes. Among the five members in this room, there are a lot of NBA Draft picks.

The Wildcats have the most underrated frontcourt in all of college basketball for the 2025-26 season.

This article first appeared on Kentucky Wildcats on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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