How Andrew Carr became the ‘team dad’ of Kentucky basketball. ‘He cares about people’

The new Kentucky Wildcats were all settling into Lexington, getting acclimated to life inside the fishbowl of UK basketball, and — most importantly — getting to know each other.

All 12 of the scholarship players on this Kentucky roster were new to the program. None of the 12 had ever been teammates. They were strangers, on and off the basketball court.

So as they settled in and it came time to get acquainted, what would these Wildcats do? Most were upperclassmen. Several were already college graduates, in fact. Maybe hit the club? Check out the area around UK’s campus? Venture a little farther and see what was happening downtown?

Or maybe it would be … team trivia night at Walker Horn’s house? Really?

“Fun fact about Andrew,” says freshman guard Collin Chandler, a grin growing across his face. “His hobbies are creating NBA trivia games.”

Andrew Carr came to Lexington for his fifth and final season of college basketball. He wanted it to be special. In two years at Delaware and two years at Wake Forest, he’d never won an NCAA Tournament game.

He had high hopes for this Kentucky team. He found an eclectic group of teammates, and he wanted to help bring them together. So he dusted off his old Power Point presentations and took a chance.

“Andrew is kind of a nerd,” said freshman guard Travis Perry, also with a knowing grin. “So he said he did those all throughout his childhood and stuff — would make the trivia, find all the questions and answers. And yeah, we went over to do that as a team.”

Carr picked Horn’s house as home base for his trivia night. All 12 scholarship players were new to town. Those who arranged for off-campus housing were still trying to figure things out, but Horn and Grant Darbyshire — two walk-ons, the only holdovers from the previous season’s roster — were already settled in.

“I guess we just had the best setup,” Horn acknowledged of being granted host duties.

So the team poured into their house, and Carr got the game started.

This was — all acknowledged — probably not the typical team bonding activity for a bunch of mostly 20-something college basketball players. How many other programs around the country were doing something like this?

“I doubt there’s many,” Perry said, chuckling at the question. “And I can guarantee there’s not many that had as much knowledge as there was in that room. … We had some guys that really know ball.”

Fellow freshman Trent Noah, listening in on the conversation in the UK locker room, jumped in.

“My team won,” Noah boasted from the next locker over.

“Yeah, but you didn’t do anything.” Perry shot back.

Was it actually fun?

“It’s so fun. So fun,” Chandler said. “There’s some great memories that we’ve had as a team doing that.”

A few feet away from him, Jaxson Robinson — a fifth-year college basketball veteran — didn’t deny it.

“It was really cool,” he said. “Good experience. Everybody loved them.”

By all accounts, Horn and Lamont Butler were the standouts.

“I’m very big on trivia and knowledge of the NBA, for sure,” Butler, yet another fifth-year player, said with pride.

“We’re fairly knowledgeable in the subject, yeah,” Horn agreed.

When Carr was asked about these team trivia nights, the 6-foot-11 power forward started looking around the room, his eyes darting back and forth at different lockers, clearly wondering which of his teammates had been talking about it.

“So, I kind of outed myself here,” he said with a laugh. “But I’m just a basketball nerd.”

Kentucky basketball trivia night

And with that, Carr jumped excitedly into an explanation of exactly what these nights entail.

“So pretty much, I have about four or five PowerPoint trivia decks,” he said. “Probably about 20 rounds. You got two questions each round, one for each team.”

Carr explained that this all began as a game with his hometown friends back in West Chester, Pennsylvania — a suburb of Philadelphia — who had a shared love of basketball trivia. Before Carr got to Kentucky, he’d played the games over Zoom with his high school buddies. He hosted some trivia nights at Wake Forest, too.

When he arrived in Lexington, he found some fellow basketball nerds. Carr said he would often play Sporcle quiz games with Butler and Brandon Wells, the team’s senior athletic trainer. That gave him the bug to pull out his old Power Points.

The games consisted of NBA trivia, with some college basketball thrown in.

“And everybody loved it,” Carr said proudly. “Until we got to the college part, because then Walker just crushed everybody. He’s good at both. But, like, unreal at college.”

Horn, the son of Northern Kentucky head coach Darrin Horn, was a willing host for his new teammates. He’d spent the previous two years at Kentucky under John Calipari. There wasn’t much continuity on last season’s UK roster either — only three returning scholarship players — and Horn knew how much nights like this could help bring a group together.

So they streamed Carr’s games onto the TV in the living room. The players all got together. Carr led the proceedings.

“It’s more fun than you think to just search through Basketball Reference or something like that, and create your own questions,” he said. “So that’s what I’ve been doing for a little while. I got so many NBA questions that it’s been fun to be able to bring that to the team, try and test some of the guys’ knowledge. And I get to be the host, and host everything for ’em.”

Butler seemed taken aback when first asked about these nights. Once he realized this wasn’t yet another question about the team’s next NCAA Tournament opponent or the umpteenth inquiry into his injured shoulder, he excitedly recounted the structure and rules of the game, offering up examples of possible questions and laying out the scoring system.

“I enjoy those types of games,” he said, finally pausing to take a breath.

That was one of the first examples of Carr stepping up in an attempt to bring the Cats together. It’s something he’s continued to do for this Kentucky team all season long. And it didn’t take long to realize that when Carr spoke up, other Cats were sure to listen.

“He’s been through it,” Horn said. “He knows what it takes to be a good college player, to be on a good college team. So I think people trust him. And he’s a good guy. He has the best intentions. So he’s been a great vocal leader for us this year.”

The ‘team dad’ of UK basketball

Carr shouldn’t have been looking around at his teammates to try and figure out who had outed him as the Wildcats’ resident basketball nerd. The man responsible for leaking the details of his trivia night wasn’t even in the room.

A couple of weeks earlier, Kentucky coach Mark Pope was sitting in his office and speaking on Carr’s leadership ability. He shook his head and smiled at the best example of it.

The story of the first meeting between Pope and Carr’s family has been well-chronicled at this point.

The Carrs, coming to town for a recruiting visit last April, had flight issues and ended up landing late at night in Nashville. Pope, coveting Carr for his first UK roster, left Lexington — after flying to Las Vegas and back that same morning to get a commitment from Butler — and retrieved the player and his family, who’d all jumped in an Uber, not wanting to sit around at the airport, en route to Lexington. Pope picked them up somewhere around Bowling Green.

So the UK coach — operating on pure adrenaline and Diet Coke at that point — spent a couple of hours or so with Carr and his family, getting to know them before the visit actually began. Did he know during that drive what kind of leader Carr could be for his Cats?

“What I knew was that he was capable,” Pope said. “And I knew that he would want to do it, and I knew that’s how he was wired. This is how he’s built. What I didn’t know is how, I mean — a leader is not a one off. A leader can only lead if you have guys that are engaged in following. I think most people think of followers as like, ‘Ah, they’re just …’”

He adopted a dismissive tone here, making clear that’s not the way he sees it.

“But following is an incredible skill, actually,” he continued. “And so what was really beautiful was to watch the guys engage in his leadership. I mean, of all the things that I would have guessed that my team would have been doing in the summer in my first year coaching at the University of Kentucky, I would not have guessed that they would build a whole series of Power Points and do team Trivial Pursuit that was produced and run by one of the players.”

Pope paused for a moment to let that soak in.

“Like, I don’t know if there’s a lot of programs in college where that’s one of the ways the guys all engage and spend their time. But that’s one example. As that happened two or three times, and then guys started saying, ‘Hey, let’s go do this.’ And it was the whole team. Like, the whole team was going to do it.”

Carr’s leadership started spreading. Guys began bonding more. The trivia nights faded away, but other team-building activities emerged in their place. Over time, several leaders have emerged from this Kentucky roster, on and off the court.

“But it is accurate that a lot of guys would say — if you ask them, ‘Who’s the dad of the team?’ — they would say Andrew,” Pope said. “I think that’s who most of the guys would say.”

Turns out, you don’t even have to ask.

“I like to call AC the team dad,” Robinson said. “He’s just the guy that kind of gets everybody together, gets us to do this stuff that nobody else really wants to do. So it’s been really helpful just having him as a leader, especially off the court. I think that’s the big area that he’s really helped us, just being like the glue that’s brought everybody together. So he’s been really huge for us the entire season — even before the season started.”

He’s been especially important for Chandler, Noah and Perry — the three freshmen.

It’s common for UK basketball players — once they get settled into Lexington — to rent their own off-campus homes or apartments. Their rooms at the Wildcat Lodge — across the parking lot from the team’s practice facility — remain home base, but the Cats usually reside elsewhere.

By the time the fall semester started, the Lodge was a relatively empty place. The only permanent residents among the basketball team were the three freshmen. And Carr.

Chandler, Noah and Perry have all gone through periods of doubt and frustration this season. There have been long stretches where they didn’t play much. Or didn’t play at all. Getting adjusted to life and basketball at this level was difficult. They had Carr there to lean on.

“Andrew has been huge for us, in our development,” Chandler said. “He’s someone that will hang out with anybody on the team. Ever since we came and stepped foot on campus in the summer, he’s someone that has taken the whole team under his wing, to bring us together.

“And so he’s been a great mentor and someone that can help us to keep a level head through the ups and downs.”

Even in this instance, Carr morphs into dad mode when explaining his intentions. Why did he stick around on campus? His reasons, according to him, were more sensible than noble.

“I put a lot of effort into trying to make sure my lodge room was very nice,” he said, completely serious. “And so I just thought, financially, one it’s probably smarter. But then also, it was just fun to be right there. You know, it’s a walk across the parking lot (from the practice facility) to hang out. And they’ve got pool (tables) and ping pong and whatever else you want. And then being with some of the guys pretty early on, just trying to get to know everybody as much as possible.”

Carr got engaged in New York over the team’s winter break, and when his fiancée, Genevieve, moved to Lexington a few weeks later, the couple got their own place. That left the kids all alone back at the Lodge.

“Yeah, he was there with us for a good while, until …” Perry said, grinning and shooting a glance toward Carr’s locker. “I don’t want to blame his fiancée, but until she moved down here, yeah, he was there with us, hanging out with us all the time, eating dinner with us.”

The freshman smiled again. “And now we kind of miss him.”

Coach Andrew Carr?

Carr has a mind for basketball, if you haven’t noticed. After a particularly eloquent explanation of one aspect of the game a few weeks into the season, he was asked if he had an interest in coaching someday.

“I do. Definitely,” he said, without hesitation. “I think it would be a really cool opportunity for me.”

And then he flashed that sensible side. He said he’d like to play the sport as long as possible — either here or overseas — and would have to weigh that as a consideration. And then, the more important factor.

“The only drawback for me would be a little bit of family instability and moving around and things like that,” he said. “So it kind of really depends on all of that. But definitely, you know, I certainly have a passion for it, and I would love to be able to impact 18- to 25-year-olds in such a crazy way that coaches really are able to do.”

At that point, Carr, who turned 23 last month, wasn’t even engaged. But he was already thinking about life with a wife and kids and taking into consideration how the demands of the coaching profession might impact his family.

Asked again about the possibility a few days ago, Carr hadn’t changed his mind.

“It’s definitely on the radar for me,” he said. “Definitely. I just love basketball. I love knowing why or understanding why you do things — offensively, defensively, whatever it is. … I definitely want to stick around basketball, whether it’s sports media or coaching or something along those lines.”

If he needs any recruiters — anyone to vouch for his character and his vision — he won’t have to look far.

Horn, whose father has won NCAA Tournament games as a player and a head coach, has also spent countless hours in the presence of Pope and Shaka Smart — who welcomed him to Texas practices while his dad was an assistant there — as well as Calipari, the Hall of Famer who he learned under for the previous two seasons.

“I think AC would be great,” Horn said. “I mean, first and foremost, he knows the game. He’s a smart player. I think everybody that watches him can see that. And he’s a likable guy. He gets along with everyone, and he has great relationships with his teammates and his coaches. So I could definitely see AC doing that.”

“I think he’d be a great coach,” said Perry, whose dad coached his high school team to a Kentucky state title last year. “He already kind of talks like one. He already has a lot of Coach Pope’s tendencies, I think. But just kind of the way he sees the game is pretty special. Anytime there are questions in film (sessions), he has the answers to them. He’s just a great ball knower. He just knows the game, inside and out.”

And, perhaps aside from Pope, he’s the guy who helped bring this Kentucky basketball team together more than anyone. While Carr is usually quick to deflect any praise that comes his way, spreading it around the team instead, he accepts the fact that he’s a leader.

“I think I’ve been blessed by the Lord. He’s really helped me,” Carr said. “I feel like I’m able to connect with everybody. And I’ve felt that way since my freshman year at Delaware, to really be able to just understand everybody, try and really care about everybody. And that goes a really long way.

“So throughout my whole career, being able to transfer in somewhere new and be a captain immediately — those kinds of things come from really trying to set a great example for people. But, also, to just be there for people, as well.”

His current coach was a captain in college, too. Pope helped lead UK’s 1996 national championship team. Carr leads the Cats into Friday night’s game against Tennessee in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament, hoping to achieve the same goal in 2025.

Get the two of them together and talking, and it won’t take long to see the similarities.

Get Pope talking about Carr, and you’ll have to listen awhile before he stops.

Could the current coach of the Wildcats see his team leader in the same profession some day?

“For sure,” Pope said. “I can see the seeds within him, for sure. And he loves the game. He’s smart about the game. He takes in information really quickly. But all that stuff doesn’t matter. Like, the X’s and O’s …”

Pope waved his hand in the air. Throw all that out the window, the gesture said.

The Kentucky coach wanted to talk about those trivia games again. And what they really represented.

“The reason I see the seeds is because he could take this really disparate group — and he wasn’t the only voice — but he could somehow galvanize this group to come do that together, right? And that’s probably the most important seed of having some ability to coach. It’s super cool. He cares about people, and he loves people, and he pays attention to people. And he’d be great. If he ends up wanting to do it, he’ll be great.”

Friday

Kentucky vs. Tennessee

What: NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional round-of-16 game

When: 7:39 p.m.

Where: Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis

TV: TBS

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Kentucky 24-11, Tennessee 29-7

Series: Kentucky leads 163-78

Last meetings: Kentucky won 78-73 on Jan. 28, 2025, in Knoxville and 75-64 on Feb. 11, 2025, in Lexington

This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 6:00 AM.

Ben Roberts

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-429-2848

Ben Roberts is the University of Kentucky men’s basketball beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He has previously specialized in UK basketball recruiting coverage and created and maintained the Next Cats blog. He is a Franklin County native and first joined the Herald-Leader in 2006. Support my work with a digital subscription