How the Kentucky men’s basketball program transports team equipment during March Madness
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Sunday night’s Selection Show for the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament revealed plenty about Kentucky basketball’s path toward a potential ninth national championship.
The Wildcats now know that they’re a 3 seed in March Madness. Mark Pope’s team is aware that its first-round foe will be 14 seed Troy, and that the Wildcats’ opening-round contest against the Trojans will take place on Friday night at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
Projecting into the future, UK knows that 2 seed Tennessee — a team UK has already beaten twice this season — is a potential Sweet 16 opponent in Indianapolis, and that 1 seed Houston is the favorite to emerge from this Midwest Regional of the NCAA tournament.
But, Sunday’s bracket reveal also provided crucial information for another important group of Wildcats: Those who are tasked with coordinating and transporting UK basketball equipment to and from games.
Spearheading this effort is Mark Evans, who works as Kentucky’s associate director of equipment.
Evans spoke to the Herald-Leader last week about the detailed-process of making sure everything gets where it needs to for the Kentucky men’s team, which will be traveling about 460 miles from Lexington to begin national postseason play in Milwaukee.
A big reason why things run smoothly is Evans’ longstanding role within the UK equipment operations setup. Evans has worked in some capacity with the Wildcats since 2009, the year John Calipari began his 15-season run as the UK head coach.
Evans spent four years as a student manager at Kentucky and served as a graduate assistant for the 2013-14 season. He became the men’s basketball equipment manager after that. His current role at UK includes overseeing all the equipment needs for the UK men’s basketball, women’s basketball and volleyball programs.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” Evans told the Herald-Leader about UK’s dialed-in process of transporting basketball equipment around the country. “I mean, it’s obviously not football, where they’re taking a trailer, but we travel with a lot of equipment.”
What equipment does Kentucky men’s basketball travel with?
First, let’s establish an understanding of what the equipment needs are for the UK men’s basketball team for a typical game away from the friendly confines of Rupp Arena.
(Rupp is hosting men’s NCAA Tournament games this year for the first time since 2013, but Kentucky isn’t allowed to play in these contests).
Using Kentucky’s regular-season finale as an example — the Cats closed the regular season with an impressive 91-83 win at Missouri — Evans walked the Herald-Leader through some of the items UK transported from Lexington to Columbia, Missouri, which is a nearly 500-mile trip West.
“Typically we travel with anywhere from like 10 to 12 bags for a regular SEC game. You travel with their warm-ups, what we call game bags — which is like all their accessories and undergarments that they wear, socks, headbands, etc. — then whatever jersey you’re going to be wearing, whether it’s a light color or a dark color,” Evans explained.
“... We travel with two pairs of shoes for each player, so you have a primary and a backup, so there’s two big separate bags for that. If any of them have a blowout, or if they don’t like the way (the shoe is) fitting, or if their shoe is loose, or something like that, so every guy gets two pairs of shoes.”
Additionally, Evans said Kentucky travels with backup jerseys and shorts, in case one needs to be replaced during the course of a game.
That happens for a variety of reasons. Recent examples include sophomore forward Brandon Garrison ripping his jersey during Kentucky’s final home game against LSU and junior guard Otega Oweh bleeding from his mouth after taking an elbow to the face during UK’s SEC Tournament loss to Alabama.
Kentucky’s list of items that it takes on the road includes anything that fits a catch-all description from Evans: “Anything you can think of for the coaches.”
“We have scout team jerseys, clipboards, gum, mints, whistles, pens ... pads for the court, basketballs — because you usually do a walk-through at the hotel — stools that you see them use during the timeouts, water, Gatorade, coolers.”
If you were curious, yes, Evans said there is a master checklist that’s used to ensure nothing gets left behind.
This checklist is “probably almost identical” for the UK men’s and women’s basketball teams, although the Kentucky women won’t need to worry about traveling to begin their NCAA Tournament journey.
The things Kentucky takes on the road are also partially dependent on what the UK coaching staff wants to have on hand.
Obviously, this year brought some change on that front, with Pope in his first season as head coach after Calipari spent 15 years in that post.
“Head coach, assistant coaches, different coaches and different staffs have preferences and wants and needs,” Evans said. “It can really change year to year. Obviously, there was a lot of consistency, but there’s been some changes too. But from the actual equipment standpoint, really not a lot of that changes. It would be more so preference, certain things the coaches need or want.”
Evans and his team — which includes eight student managers for the men’s basketball team who are vital to the success of the operation — are responsible for the vast majority of Kentucky’s needs when on the road.
UK’s players are responsible for their personal bags and luggage, and they must wear team-issued Nike apparel when traveling. But other than that, Evans and his crew take care of the rest.
“We just want them focusing on basketball,” Evans said. “So we try to have all the other stuff done and out of the way so that the coaches and the players are worried about the game.”
What is postseason equipment travel like for UK men’s basketball?
So that’s what a typical road game travel setup is like for Kentucky’s equipment purposes.
What about for the postseason? Like last week’s SEC Tournament in Nashville and this week’s NCAA Tournament, which UK will begin with a first-round contest Friday against Troy in Milwaukee.
Evans said the equipment travel process for postseason events is similar to that of a normal road game, with a few changes. And most of that is related to the quantity of items Kentucky takes.
“You’ve got to travel with two sets of uniforms, because you have to have a light and a dark (uniform) for seeding. And then the only other thing that really changes in terms of that is your game bag, you have to have a light and a dark because it has to comply with NCAA uniform regulations,” Evans detailed. “So that’s two more bags there. You would travel with another set of practice stuff, and then, typically just more drinks or other things like that that you’re going to need to have on hand.”
The biggest challenge for Kentucky’s postseason equipment travels is something everyone can sympathize with.
Doing laundry.
“It varies, city to city. When we’re in these neutral-site locations, it’s typically NBA guys, and I trust them and I know them from doing it for so long. So say like we’re in New York, I would pay either the Knicks or the Nets guy just to do our laundry,” Evans said. “... But when we’re somewhere like Nashville, typically, myself and student managers just find a laundromat. We may go at 1 a.m. when we get back if it’s a 24-hour one, or we may go at 7 a.m. the next day and have everything done.”
Although Kentucky only wore each of its uniform sets once during last week’s SEC Tournament, you can still only imagine the postgame laundry scene for Evans and his team after UK’s second-round win over Oklahoma. That game began late Thursday night and ended just after midnight early Friday morning in Nashville.
“There’s the saying, if you want something done right, do it yourself,” Evans added. “We have a certain way that we fold the warm-ups and check the game bags, and so rather than something be wrong for a game the next day, we typically just go do (laundry). That’s probably one of the most difficult parts.”
Like everyone associated with the UK program, Evans his hoping for a March filled with late nights and early mornings. Because if that’s the case, it means that a deep NCAA Tournament run is taking place for the Wildcats, who haven’t reached the Sweet 16 of March Madness since 2019.
“I’d rather be doing laundry at 2 a.m. than not,” Evans said.
This story was originally published March 17, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
