LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They all wanted a picture with Jeff Sheppard.
As the Most Outstanding Player of the 1998 NCAA tournament shuffled toward the KFC YUM! Center for his alma mater’s matchup at Louisville, dozens of Kentucky fans pulled him aside and held up their phones.
“Hey, look at that, son!” one father told his child after he snapped a selfie. “You just took a picture with Reed Sheppard‘s dad!”
Jeff is one of the program’s most popular former players. But his son is now the biggest star of Kentucky basketball’s royal family — which also includes his mother, former Kentucky women’s basketball star Stacey Reed Sheppard, who is No. 2 in career steals (309) for the Wildcats and a 1994 All-SEC first-teamer.
When your father is a two-time national champion and your mother is one of the greatest women’s players of all time, it is not easy to write your own story. This season, however, Sheppard has found a way to do just that.
Despite coming off the bench, Sheppard’s efficiency and production — 12.6 points, 4.5 assists and 2.5 steals per game, 54.1% shooting from the 3-point line — have made him key to Kentucky’s aim to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2015. He has also risen to become a projected first-round pick in the NBA draft, should he decide to turn pro.
It wasn’t always that way. Early in his high school career, Sheppard didn’t earn a national ranking or widespread praise. There were no guarantees he’d ever mature into a player worthy of a scholarship from a blue-chip school. By the time he was a junior in high school, however, Sheppard had grown into a nationally ranked recruit with offers from schools including Arizona State and Indiana. But when Kentucky called and offered him a scholarship, he knew his future was with the Wildcats. His parents had hoped he’d pick their alma mater, but watched from a distance because they didn’t want to influence his final choice.
“There is nothing better than to be Reed’s dad right now, so it’s been a lot of fun,” said Jeff Sheppard, who won national titles at Kentucky in 1996 and 1998. “We just wanted him to go through his process and make a decision that was best for him. To say we didn’t want this to happen would be a lie. We didn’t know. But to see it all play out right now has been very special.”
The Sheppards’ story…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – NCB…