A date that’s been circled on the UK basketball calendar is finally here. ‘We can’t wait.’
There has been a shared feeling around Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball team these past few weeks, with many of those associated with the program bringing it up on their own.
“I want to see us play against someone else” has been the common refrain.
As that opportunity got closer, the Wildcats just came right out and said it.
Eight days ago, even Pope himself — the first-year UK head coach tasked with keeping his players focused on the here and now — spoke of the challenges still facing his revamped roster and his eagerness to see them in a different setting.
“The next thing for us is actually to get on a court and play against somebody else and start coming together that way, too,” Pope said at SEC media day. “So I think we’re well on our way in the process, and we’re excited for the next steps.”
The first step in that next stage is finally here.
UK will host Kentucky Wesleyan in Rupp Arena at 7 p.m. Wednesday in its exhibition opener, the first matchup against outside competition of the Pope era.
“It’s the right time for us,” Pope said after the Blue-White scrimmage Friday night. “You know, in our progression right now, we desperately need to play against other teams. So we’re playing against a terrific team on Wednesday, and then the next week, we’re playing a national champion, and it goes on from there. So it’s just time. It’s what we need.”
Kentucky Wesleyan, which defeated Louisville in an exhibition game last year, returns five of six starters from a team that went 21-9 overall with a 15-5 mark in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference before losing in the first round of the NCAA Division II Tournament last season.
On Oct. 29, the Cats will host Minnesota State Mankato — the reigning Division II national champions — for their final exhibition game. The regular season begins Nov. 4 against Wright State in Rupp Arena before a home game against Bucknell on Nov. 9 and then the first marquee matchup of the Pope era — No. 7-ranked Duke in the Champions Classic in Atlanta — on Nov. 12.
Typically, a head coach won’t look too far into the future, especially one with a roster filled with new players who have never been teammates. But it’s exactly that unique structure of this Wildcats squad that has Pope — and others around the program — wanting to see them in action against somebody else.
There’s been plenty of preseason talk about the closeness of this team, despite all 12 scholarship players being new to UK and only one with any experience playing for the new head coach. But Pope and his staff have longed to see how that cohesion looks in actual competition.
Those around the program also think the collection of talent that has been assembled in Lexington this season is impressive — potentially much better than UK’s No. 23 AP preseason ranking, some have said on the side — but there’s an acknowledgment that you don’t truly know what you have in a basketball team until the games begin.
And while the past four months have been one long learning experience, that process ramps up when the competition starts.
“Well, the fun thing is where you get exposed,” Pope said of what he can learn about his team over these next few weeks. “You play against each other, you’re playing a similar style, because everybody is playing the same style in our gym. So you’re just hungry to get exposed.”
Pope said his players — the team has nine transfers with ample NCAA experience, seven of whom are seniors or college graduates — are “dying” to get in the film room and see what they need to shore up before the regular season starts.
“And that’s what you get from playing other teams,” Pope said. “We’re really eager. We’re at the point now where we’re really eager to go face some opponents, because we need to be a great team by the time March comes around, and you need to learn that and take in all that information and learn the principles of where we can combat the little holes that we have. So that’s what outside games do.”
Pope’s players are also relishing the thought of simply playing against someone else.
“We can’t wait,” point guard Lamont Butler said with a laugh. “We can’t wait, man. I mean, the season is right around the corner. We’ve been beating up on each other all summer and fall, so we can’t wait to play somebody else.”
Fellow fifth-year guard Jaxson Robinson — a BYU transfer and the only Wildcat who’s played for Pope — said getting in front of a crowd and the distractions that come with that would be good for the team, particularly freshmen Collin Chandler, Trent Noah and Travis Perry.
Robinson then nodded in the direction of Butler, who’s regarded as one of the best perimeter defenders in all of college basketball.
“And I’m also tired of having Lamont Butler guard me every day in practice 94 feet,” he said with a grin. “So I’m excited.”
What do these Wildcats hope to learn about themselves over the next couple of weeks?
“Well, one, on the practice court, sometimes you know each other’s play. So you’re cheating everything, and not everything looks great, because everybody knows what’s going on,” Butler said. “Also, defensively, we get to see how we stack up against other teams.
“And you know, just to feel it out there. I mean, we get to feel each other. We’ve been playing against each other, of course, mixing up everything and playing with different teammates. But now we get to actually play on the court, feel each other out there. I think that’s gonna be good for us.”
Another team leader, Andrew Carr, spoke to that same point after the Blue-White scrimmage, where he was the star of the game. Carr said Pope has been switching up the lineups every day, mixing which players play alongside each other and giving his guys different situations and matchups to work through defensively.
Carr started alongside Perry, Robinson, Koby Brea and Brandon Garrison on the Blue team Friday, while Butler was paired with Chandler, Otega Oweh, Ansley Almonor and Amari Williams on the White team, with Noah coming off the bench for the Blue squad and point guard Kerr Kriisa sitting out with a minor hamstring injury.
To Carr’s point, it’s highly unlikely that either of those five-man groups from Friday’s scrimmage will be the starting lineup Wednesday night. This roster runs so deep that Pope has plenty of positional possibilities at his disposal.
“So we’re trying to figure out how to prepare each day in practice, how to guard our own teammates,” Carr said. “And it’s given us headaches in practice every day trying to figure it out. So it’s pretty special now that we can all come together, get to be on one team. … Now, those headaches that I’ve had to deal with go on to the other team. So I’m excited for that.”
There might not be anyone more excited about that particular aspect of outside competition than Pope, who, for the first time — after a hectic spring of roster-building and four months of practice — gets to see what his Wildcats actually look like as one unit.
“I’m really excited about putting this group together and starting to learn how we function — not as five guys, but as 12 guys,” he said. “… I think these guys are built right. I think they care about each other right. I think they care about this game right. It doesn’t make it easy. All of a sudden, minutes get sparse, and opportunities maybe get a little bit less, and guys aren’t begging to get (a break). They start to feel like, ‘Ooh, I would kill to get a couple more minutes.’
“But if we do this right, it’s going to come in waves from this team. And I think we have guys that are made to do that.”
