After leaving Kentucky, Travis Perry reflects on his season at Ole Miss

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope has made it clear the point guard position didn’t go as expected in the 2025-26 season.

A lot of that had to do with what happened this past offseason.

The Cats couldn’t have foreseen an injury-riddled season for junior transfer addition Jaland Lowe, who suited up just nine times for Kentucky and intends to hit the transfer portal again this offseason. But two other roster moves in April 2025 thinned UK’s point guard depth.

First was Acaden Lewis’ decision to decommit from Kentucky. The four-star high school recruit ended up at Villanova and was a Second Team All-Big East selection after averaging 12.2 points, 5.3 assists and 1.9 steals per game.

Then came Travis Perry’s decision to transfer. That one was a major head-scratcher for UK fans.

Perry — still the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky boys high school basketball history — made 31 appearances with four starts as a UK freshman during the 2024-25 season. While Perry was put into some difficult spots during Pope’s first year as coach, the 6-foot-1 floor general was expected to return to the Cats for his sophomore campaign.

That didn’t happen.

Perry hit the transfer portal, choosing to leave UK just before the portal entry deadline last spring. He landed with Chris Beard’s Ole Miss program, which had been one of Perry’s five final options during his high school recruitment.

He averaged 5.3 points, 1.6 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game while shooting 34.3% from the field, 35.3% on 3-pointers and 88.0% from the free-throw line at Ole Miss. The Rebels went 15-20 overall and 4-14 in SEC regular-season games, although Perry was a key factor in a surprise run to the SEC Tournament semifinals.

All of Perry’s individual statistics — including his 35 games played, 16 starts and 16.4 minutes per game — represented improvement from his freshman year.

“Just feel like that I’ve grown, I think as a person,” Perry told the Herald-Leader following an SEC Tournament win over Georgia. “Something that’s big for me (is) taking the adversity we’ve been through, taking the adversity I’ve been through and just continuing to play the game, continue to have fun in it, have the love of it. Just getting through it has been really good for me.”

Perry develops during season at Ole Miss

End-of-season statistics alone don’t tell the full story of Perry’s sophomore year.

Perry — who won the 2024 Kentucky Mr. Basketball award and that year’s Sweet 16 state championship at Lyon County — struggled to begin the 2025-26 season.

Through Ole Miss’ 13-game nonconference season, Perry shot 30.5% from 3-point range. That figure drops to 27.1% if you take out an outlier performance in which Perry went 5 for 11 on 3s, scored a career-high 21 points and recorded four steals in a December loss to NC State.

In general, Perry struggled to record assists and grab rebounds while adapting to his new basketball environment in Oxford, Miss. He played just four minutes off the bench in Ole Miss’ first SEC game of the season, an 86-70 loss at Oklahoma.

As Ole Miss continued its slog of a season, Perry’s individual play showed signs of life. He made four 3-pointers in an overtime win at Georgia. In a home loss to Auburn, Perry matched his performance against NC State with five made 3-pointers.

Growth came in other areas, too. Perry secured at least three rebounds in four different SEC regular-season games. He also made plays for teammates, dishing out a career-best four assists in a home loss to league champion Florida.

“Just trust in the work that I put in. Whenever you have a couple rough games, it’s easy to kind of fall a little bit, to not really have as much confidence in yourself,” Perry said. “But my teammates, my coaches have really talked to me about, they know that I work hard and just me having to trust myself, to come out and show it every day.”

This part of Perry’s development bore fruit during Ole Miss’ strong close to the 2025-26 season.

Beard’s program rattled off three wins in the SEC Tournament — over Texas, Georgia and Alabama — to reach the semifinals of the event, where Ole Miss lost in overtime to eventual tournament champion Arkansas.

Perry started all of Ole Miss’ games in the conference tournament and put together some standout play while in Nashville.

He set a career high with six rebounds in Ole Miss’ second-round win over Georgia, then matched it the next night in a quarterfinal win over Alabama. Perry went 4 for 8 on 3-pointers against Georgia, and 3 for 9 from distance in the season-ending loss to Arkansas.

On the defensive end, Perry had at least one steal in five straight games to end the season.

Over Ole Miss’ final three games, Perry recorded eight assists against just two turnovers. He logged 30 minutes against Georgia, 33 minutes against Alabama and a career-high 37 minutes in the overtime loss to Arkansas.

“For us to win, I feel like I had to come out there and do more than just shoot the ball. You’re not always going to shoot the ball well. So just trying to impact the game any way I can,” Perry said. “They’ve been on me all year about being a little bit more nasty, a little bit more physical all around the game... But that’s just been the main thing, just trying to impact the game without scoring the ball.”

Perry, Beard said, was to have a “bigger role” at Ole Miss than he had at Kentucky. And that required more than just outside shooting.

“Travis is not a soft player,” Beard said after the SEC Tournament win over Georgia. “He’s a physical guy. He’s a competitor. But in the game of basketball, there’s going to be plays and possessions where you have to play with that kind of strength.”

Should Perry chose to stay at Ole Miss, his play to close the 2025-26 season could serve as a launching pad for his junior campaign.

“We’ve been encouraging Travis from day one to initiate the contact, don’t run from it,” Beard said. “... Travis has got some nasty in him. It’s just kind of a deal where we’re trying to pull it out of him, slowly but surely.”

Beard stressed during SEC Basketball Media Days in October that Perry was more than just a shooter.

In this way, Perry’s sophomore season was a step in the right direction.

“The mindset is always to go out there and play for my teammates. I’m really happy where I’m at,” Perry said. “... The mindset is to come out there and figure out a way to help my team win. That’s something that probably makes my mom really happy over there hearing that stuff. But for me, I’m just focused on trying to do anything I can to help us win.”

Whatever’s next for Perry in his college basketball journey, he still leans on some of the lessons learned while playing high school hoops in the commonwealth for his father, Ryan, at Lyon County.

“Just know that if you go out and play aggressive, like there was never a time in those games (at Lyon County) that I wasn’t aggressive. So just going out and playing aggressive and really just winning at the end of the day,” Perry said. “That’s what it comes down to. I just wanted to win. In those days, I didn’t care how many I scored, didn’t care about whatever. How many rebounds, assists, steals, it didn’t matter, as long as we won. That was all that mattered.”

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