Antonio Reeves had a strange offseason. He talks about his return to Kentucky basketball.

Even by the current standards of college basketball, Antonio Reeves had an unusual spring.

With the recent evolution of the NCAA’s transfer portal throwing another wrench into the sport’s offseason, joining NBA stay-or-go decisions, coaching turnover and late recruiting cycles to form a silly season that truly never ends, Reeves’ situation this spring and summer was a strange one.

When he declared for the NBA Draft — while maintaining his college eligibility — shortly after the end to Kentucky’s 2022-23 season, the expectation in college basketball circles was that Reeves would get feedback from pro teams and ultimately choose to return to school.

Along with former teammates Oscar Tshiebwe and Chris Livingston, he stretched that decision to the very end — the May 31 deadline date to make a final call on whether to stay in school or stick with the draft. By that night, it was known that Livingston and Tshiebwe had decided to opt for the pros. And it was known that Reeves had pulled his name out of the 2023 draft.

But that decision — unannounced by Reeves publicly, and unacknowledged by UK — left as many questions as it did answers. Would Reeves return to Lexington? No one knew for sure.

The senior guard didn’t enter the transfer portal, but he also didn’t explicitly say he was coming back to play for the Wildcats. Complicating the situation was the confirmation that he had enrolled in summer classes at Illinois State, presumably with the intent to graduate before the fall, which would open the scenario of transferring a second time, without the penalty of sitting out.

Whatever his intentions at that time, Reeves is back in town now.

He returned to the program late last month and has been taking part in practices over the past couple of weeks as the team prepares for its trip to the GLOBL JAM in Canada, a tournament that starts Wednesday afternoon.

Reeves spoke with local reporters for the first time since his return Friday morning, and he was obviously asked to recap what was going on in between the time he removed his name from the draft and ultimately decided to come back to Kentucky.

The fifth-year college player didn’t quite bite on that line of questioning.

“I’ll keep that between me and my family. I don’t want to speak on that type of stuff,” Reeves told the Herald-Leader. “But just going through the process — trying to be a pro — just going through workouts every day and things like that … I always considered (returning) here first. I definitely wanted to be here for a second year. That’s what I wanted to do.”

Reeves said he was in contact with UK Coach John Calipari at least once a week, also keeping in touch with the program’s other coaches. He said he kept them abreast of his situation and also asked how the current players — almost all of them newcomers — were doing.

However those conversations went, there seem to be no hard feelings on either side now.

Calipari spoke positively about Reeves and his return during his own press conference last Friday, the first time the UK coach had met with reporters since the end of the 2022-23 season.

“Right now, Antonio doesn’t look like the same guy,” Calipari said. “You know why? There’s no anxiety. He knows what this is. He walks in — now he talks more. Now he’s not, like, ‘What do I …? Where do I …’ He knows. And he’s just playin’. That’s like a second year here. But we got a bunch of young guys that are going through the anxiety (of), ‘Am I good enough? What is this?’”

Once Reeves decided to return, he said Calipari spoke with him about being more of a leader for this season’s team, which currently includes seven scholarship freshmen, two returning sophomores who didn’t play much last season, late transfer Tre Mitchell, who’s been in town only a couple of weeks, and Reeves, the only returnee who played much at all in 2022-23.

From the way his new, young teammates see it, Reeves is already embracing that role.

“How he is off the court, he teaches us instead of just being like one of those dudes that doesn’t talk to underclassmen,” said freshman guard Rob Dillingham. “Really just being a role model for us. Antonio Reeves has been a great role model for me, for sure.

“He’s not really a loud voice because that’s not really how Tone is, but like when you ask him a question, he always answers, he always looks out, he always tries to give us the best answer he can, and he shows us by the example of how he does in practice.”

A newcomer himself last season — after spending his first three years in college at Illinois State — Reeves grinned at the thought of himself being the UK basketball veteran in year two.

“Just being that old head here, the guys just look at me as an older brother,” he said. “They ask me questions all the time. Trying to figure out how to play at the collegiate level, and just getting them ready to get on the floor and enjoy it.”

He acknowledged that he was “pretty quiet” last year, especially with experienced returnees like Tshiebwe, Sahvir Wheeler, Jacob Toppin, Lance Ware and CJ Fredrick already in the mix.

“But this year, I definitely have to use my voice,” Reeves said. “Because we have a lot of younger guys that are out there.”

Reeves on the court

After ending his Illinois State career as the clear star of that mid-major program, Reeves went through a rough adjustment during his first season at Kentucky, starting strong before hitting a bump in the road a few weeks into the season, that hurdle coinciding with a higher level of competition for the Cats.

He obviously found his way, and by the end of the 2022-23 campaign, he was the Cats’ go-to guy on the perimeter, ending the season as UK’s leading backcourt scorer, top three-point shooter (by a wide margin) and finishing second in points per game behind only Tshiebwe, the reigning national player of the year.

He scored a career-high 37 points in the regular-season finale at Arkansas, leading an upset victory over the Razorbacks in a game in which the Cats had zero healthy point guards.

“At the beginning of the season, I was still trying to find my role in the team,” he said a few days after that performance. “I wasn’t as confident as I am now.”

Before struggling in the final game of the season — a 1-for-15 shooting performance in a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Kansas State — Reeves had hit more than 40 percent of his three-pointers and established himself as a three-level scorer that kept defenses on their toes.

“His offense, it’s shaking many people,” Tshiebwe said before the postseason began. “Many teams right now — they’re in panic mode because of how he’s playing.”

The hope within Kentucky’s program is that it will carry over into year two. The newest Cats are already getting a glimpse of it.

Freshman forward Justin Edwards — a projected lottery pick in the 2024 NBA Draft — was asked Thursday if anyone on this team had surprised him in the early practices.

“I would say Tone,” he said. “Even though I watched him last year, like just him being my teammate and seeing how good he is. Like, ‘Now I see what they’re talking about.’ His shotmaking. He makes a lot of, like, creative shots.”

UK’s freshmen are likely to get most of the attention this season. Guys like Edwards, Dillingham, point guard DJ Wagner and post player Aaron Bradshaw are all potential first-round picks in next year’s draft.

But Reeves said Friday that those guys were already in his ear, hoping he’d come back to join them, while he was still deliberating his basketball future during the spring.

“They called me, texted me every day. ‘We want you back. We want you to be the older brother on the team.’ Things like that,” he said. “Off the court, we’re all together every day.”

Dillingham and Edwards both confirmed that.

“Yeah, for sure,” Dillingham said. “I definitely wanted Tone back because we obviously needed some veteran power, and (we’re) definitely very young, so it’s just like, ‘We need Tone.’ He averaged 14 points per game last year, so it’ll be great to have him back. So I was definitely hitting him up every day to try to get him.”

This will be Reeves’ final go-round in college basketball, taking advantage of the fifth year of eligibility granted to all players who participated in the COVID-19-impacted 2020-21 season.

Obviously, he hopes to parlay this run into a pro career, preferably in the NBA. He said league decision-makers told him during the pre-draft process that they loved his shotmaking ability and his flashes of creating offense for himself, but they want to see him play a more physical style, and improving his defense will be a key to upping his NBA stock.

Whether or not he can add those wrinkles to his game will be evaluated later. For now, Reeves is back in Lexington, and he said Friday that he’s ready to shoulder more of a load as a second-year player in Kentucky’s program. He also said he’s happy with his decision to be playing the 2023-24 season as a Wildcat.

“They’re family here,” Reeves said. “They definitely wanted me back, wanted me to be the older guy. That’s how much they really want me here. That’s the key: somebody that wants you.”

GLOBL JAM

The schedule for men’s games in the GLOBL JAM, an international basketball showcase in Toronto featuring Kentucky as the USA representative:

Wednesday, July 12

1:30 p.m.: United States vs. Germany (CBS Sports Network live)

8 p.m.: Canada vs. Africa

Thursday, July 13

1:30 p.m.: Africa vs. Germany

8 p.m.: Canada vs. United States (CBS Sports Network at midnight)

Saturday, July 15

1:30 p.m.: Africa vs. United States (CBS Sports Network live)

8 p.m.: Germany vs. Canada

Sunday, July 16

1:30 p.m.: Bronze medal game

8 p.m.: Gold medal game (CBS Sports Network live, if UK is playing)

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