<\/p>\n
Kentucky men\u2019s basketball landed another recruit for this upcoming season, this one being Ousmane N\u2019Diaye, a 6\u201911 Senegalese professional player.<\/p>\n
Photo via FIBA<\/p>\n
Kentucky men\u2019s basketball and Mark Pope added to their 2026-27 roster on Friday, signing a European star.<\/p>\n
Ousmane N\u2019Diaye, a Senegalese professional basketball player, who most recently suited up for Vanoli Cremona in the Italian LBA, the top flight of Italian basketball, has signed with the Wildcats according to the UK Sports Network.<\/p>\n
Standing at 6-foot-11, N\u2019Diaye is not yet cleared by the NCAA to compete as a center, but is set to work through the process, which first requires a player to have a college team.<\/p>\n
At 22 years old, N\u2019Diaye has never played in the NBA, withdrawing his name from the draft in 2023 before going through the draft process last year. He was not selected and thus has never been on an NBA G-League or NBA roster.<\/p>\n
He started his career for Dragons Rhoendorf in Germany for the 2019-20 season before moving around in Spain prior to his landing at Vanoli Cremona.<\/p>\n
With Vanoli Cremona, full name Guerino Vanoli Basket, N\u2019Diaye has come into his own as a basketball player, averaging 10.1 points per game in 26 games in an average of 27.3 minutes per night. He\u2019s also averaged 6.7 rebounds per night and 0.7 assists per game with 14 blocks this season.<\/p>\n
As for shooting, N\u2019Diaye has shot 54% from the field on 104 attempts and has connected on 42 3-pointers for an average of 32%.<\/p>\n
Outside of his club game, N\u2019Diaye is also a member of the Senegalese National Team, which took home bronze in the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket tournament, which was won by Angola.<\/p>\n
N\u2019Diaye possibly first appeared on radars back in 2016 when he was just 12 years old, appearing at the 2016 Basketball Without Borders (BWB) camp in Angola.<\/p>\n
Assuming he is given eligibility for the collegiate game, N\u2019Diaye will be a valuable piece at center with Malachi Moreno expected to return from the NBA Draft process.<\/p>\n
He joins a roster that already includes returnees Kam Williams, likely Moreno, Trent Noah, Reece Potter and Braydon Hawthorne, transfers Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins and true freshmen Zyon Hawthorne and Mason Williams.<\/p>\n
Kentucky remains active in the transfer portal and in the European market while also remaining in pursuit of No. 1 overall prospect Tyran Stokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kentucky men\u2019s basketball landed another recruit for this upcoming season, this one being Ousmane N\u2019Diaye, a 6\u201911 Senegalese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3127,17955,15,17954,17953,17956],"class_list":["post-26613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-europe","tag-basketball","tag-commit","tag-european","tag-kentucky","tag-ousmane","tag-signs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}