{"id":763280,"date":"2026-04-30T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/763280\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:30:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:30:24","slug":"2026-nba-mock-draft-malachi-moreno-selected-in-espn-60-pick-projection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/763280\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 NBA Mock Draft: Malachi Moreno selected in ESPN 60-pick projection"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Moreno first announced he was testing the NBA waters, many assumed that he\u2019d ultimately withdraw and return to school. While that\u2019s still the likeliest outcome, his NBA stock appears to be higher than anticipated.<\/p>\n

The latest 2026 NBA Mock Draft from ESPN\u2019s Jeremy Woo<\/a> has Moreno going 43rd overall to the Brooklyn Nets, right in the middle of Round 2. While it\u2019s still pretty far from a first-round selection and guaranteed money, it does give Moreno something to think about if he feels confident that he\u2019d be one of the 60 selections in this year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Jayden Quaintance went 15th overall to the Chicago Bulls, while no other Wildcats from this past season were selected, though Ugonna Onyenso, who finished his career at Virginia, went 50th overall to the Toronto Raptors.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d still wager on Moreno returning for his sophomore season, especially with the 2027 draft class looking significantly weaker than this one. A sophomore leap could very well put him in the first-round range of next year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s far too early to panic about potentially losing Moreno to the NBA, but it will be interesting to watch the pre-draft process unfold for him, especially if he gets invited to the NBA Combine in Chicago on May 10-17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Moreno first announced he was testing the NBA waters, many assumed that he\u2019d ultimately withdraw and return…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":763281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[1541,2629,12294,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-763280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball","tag-nba-draft","tag-nba-mock-draft","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116492725650180967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}