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Inside The Huskies

It's Huskies South: Kepnang Follows Diallo to Kentucky

The big man will play a seventh college basketball season in Lexington.
Dan Raley|
Franck Kepnang (11) will continue his basketball career at Kentucky.
Franck Kepnang (11) will continue his basketball career at Kentucky. | Dave Sizer phot

Franck Kepnang has become the second former University of Washington basketball player to transfer to Kentucky, where the 6-foot-11 center will reunite with guard Zoom Diallo and join one of the nation's blue-blood programs.

Those two will play for Wildcats coach Mark Pope, himself a one-time UW forward during his long ago playing career.

On Saturday, Kepnang made his plans known and will spend a seventh college basketball season in Lexington, Kentucky, after playing four in Montlake and his first two at Oregon.

This past winter, Kepnang appeared in 27 outings and started 25 -- the closest he came to a full season during four injury-filled years with the Huskies.

Diallo was a 29-game starter while playing in 33 games for a 16-17 UW team.

So the lure of Kentucky has done a lot of damage to Danny Sprinkle's rebuilding efforts by taking two starters from him during this particular transfer portal period.

The explosive Kepnang is both an intimidating yet highly limited player when stationed inside.

He averaged 2 blocks an outing while forcing opponents to think twice about challenging him on defense.

Yet while he could drop in soft one-handers around the key, Kepnang proved frustrating in that he simply couldn't catch the ball when fed inside so teammates seldom looked for him on offense.

Kentucky fairly quickly will adopt this gregarious and demonstrative player as a fan favorite. For the UW, whether in or out of uniform, he was always involved what was going on during game night.

In his first season, Sprinkle watched with amusement as Kepnang grabbed a towel and ran out on to the floor to clean up a wet spot.

Franck Kepnang wipes up a wet spot on the floor.
Franck Kepnang wipes up a wet spot on the floor. | Skylar Lin Visuals

For Kentucky to benefit from this big man, it will need to do its best to keep Kepnang healthy.

He appeared in just 59 games over his four UW seasons for Mike Hopkins- and Sprinkle-coached teams.

In the 2022-23 season, Kepnang played in just eight games for the Huskies before he suffered a knee injury and was done for the season.

The following winter, he appeared in just 10 games and injured his knee again, unable to play past Christmas for the second consecutive year.

In Sprinkle's initial season, Kepnang played in just two outings before he was injured once more and missed the next two and a half months of the schedule before coming back for a dozen games.

This past season, big Franck seemed to get over the hump and make it well into the new year before getting injured once more and missing the final six games.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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