Former Hawkeye basketball guard CJ Fredrick lands at Kentucky

Sixteen days after entering the NCAA's transfer portal, former Iowa basketball player CJ Fredrick has landed at a not-surprising destination.

Fredrick has signed with Kentucky and head coach John Calipari, that program announced on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

Fredrick was the 2018 Kentucky Gatorade Player after leading Covington Catholic High School to a state championship. The move brings him closer to his native Cincinnati, which is just 83 miles from the Lexington campus.

Fredrick spent three seasons at Iowa; one redshirt year, then two as a starting shooting guard for the Hawkeyes. Fredrick started all 52 games in which he played during his Iowa career, and he led the Big Ten Conference in 3-point accuracy as a redshirt freshman. He was plagued by various injuries at Iowa that caused him to miss 10 games and big chunks of others. 

Fredrick dealt with plantar fasciitis during the final three months of the Hawkeyes’ 2020-21 season and failed to score in Iowa’s NCAA Tournament exit against Oregon.

For his Iowa career, Fredrick averaged 8.8 points per game. He was expected to be a primary scorer on next year's Hawkeye team until informing Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery on April 18 that he would be entering the portal. He did so the next day, and McCaffery responded with a terse press release and had yet to publicly comment on Fredrick's decision.

Fredrick's uncle, Joe Fredrick, once played for Fran McCaffery at Notre Dame. Iowa has since replaced Fredrick's shooting-guard role with Jordan Bohannon, who announced a week after Fredrick's decision that he would return to the Hawkeyes for a sixth season.