Justin McBride, a 6-foot-7 forward, has signed with the Kentucky men’s basketball program, the team announced on April 30. McBride averaged 15.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per game last season at James Madison University.
McBride was named to the All-Sun Belt third team after playing in all 31 games and starting in 30 for James Madison during the 2025-26 season. He became the first player from JMU since Matt Lewis in the 2019-20 season to average at least 15 points and five rebounds per game. Over the course of the season, he scored in double figures in 22 games and surpassed the 20-point mark ten times. He shot nearly half his attempts successfully from the field (49.4 percent) and made forty percent of his three-point shots.
He is one of only five JMU players since the mid-2000s to record multiple games with at least thirty points in a single season, including standout performances with thirty-three points against Norfolk State and thirty points along with twelve rebounds against South Alabama. The thirty-three point effort set a new scoring mark for a JMU player inside Atlantic Union Bank Center.
Before joining James Madison, McBride played as a sophomore for Nevada where he averaged nearly eight points and just over four rebounds per game across thirty-four appearances, reaching double digits eleven times that year. As a freshman at Oklahoma State, he appeared in twenty-four games while averaging two-and-a-half points as well as one-and-a-half rebounds per contest; he also led Big Twelve freshmen by shooting seventy percent on two-point field goals.
In high school, McBride was ranked seventy-ninth nationally by recruiting service 247Sports for his class and earned several honors including First Team UIL All-State recognition while guiding Plano High School to an unbeaten regular season as a junior.
