For the second day in a row, NC State men’s basketball head coach Kevin Keatts added a transfer to his program as, Kentucky center Sacha Killeya-Jones announced via Twitter that he will be joining the Wolfpack.
Killeya-Jones, a former five-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American, won’t be eligible to play for the Pack until the 2019-20 season due to NCAA rules, but joins a deep group of talented big men that Keatts has put together. Killeya-Jones will have two years of eligibility remaining once he joins the Pack.
The 6-foot-10 center is from Chapel Hill and got very limited playing time at Kentucky. Last season, Killeya-Jones averaged 13.7 minutes per game, scoring 3.3 points per game and pulling down an average of 2.9 rebounds.
Killeya-Jones became the second transfer that Keatts has added this week, as graduate transfer guard Eric Lockett reportedly joined the Pack Monday. Killeya-Jones was ranked among the top 25 players in the country by ESPN in his 2016 recruiting class, and should bring length and skill to a Wolfpack team that lost 7-foot center Omer Yurtseven this offseason.
While the Killeya-Jones addition is a big one for the Wolfpack moving forward, it does create a logistical problem in Raleigh. With both Lockett and Killeya-Jones coming in as scholarship players, NC State is now up to 14 scholarship athletes if guard Torin Dorn decides to return.
NCAA Division 1 basketball teams are allotted 13 scholarship spots, and the Wolfpack is now one over that number with its incoming freshman class, returning players and transfers. NC State will need to find a way to cut one scholarship before the fall.