With one game, expectations for this UK basketball season went through the roof
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky dominated preseason favorite Purdue 78-65, boosting national title expectations.
- Coach Mark Pope deployed balanced rotations and physicality to control rebounds and paint.
- Key role players like Jasper Johnson and Collin Chandler signaled depth and buy-in.
The expectations around this Kentucky basketball team were already high.
They always are, of course. But this preseason has felt a little different.
Heading into his second year in charge of the program, coach Mark Pope has fully embraced those expectations. Last season was a learning experience, and he put this 2025-26 UK roster together with those lessons in mind. And pretty much from the moment this team has been assembled, Pope hasn’t stopped talking about the quest for a national championship.
That’s not merely a goal. That’s his expectation.
After what happened Friday night in Rupp Arena, a whole lot more folks will be expecting it, too.
In their first look at outside competition since coming together as a team six months ago, Pope’s Wildcats faced the Purdue Boilermakers, the No. 1 team in the preseason rankings.
And they ran them out of the gym.
No. 9-ranked Kentucky defeated Purdue 78-65 in the exhibition opener for both teams.
The Cats took their first lead less than two minutes in, and they never trailed again. Their advantage was never fewer than eight points over the final 13 minutes of the game. That lead ballooned to 17 at one point in the second half.
Purdue coach Matt Painter put it plainly.
“They walked us,” he said. “And look at the guys that we played. … Like, this could have been worse, right?”
Probably so.
The box score Painter was looking at showed preseason national player of the year Braden Smith with 32 minutes on the court. His fellow senior Fletcher Loyer played 31 minutes. Trey Kaufman-Renn — the other senior in this veteran Purdue lineup and an All-America candidate himself — logged 28 minutes.
Meanwhile, Pope balanced his team’s playing time. Ten Wildcats played at least 16 minutes. Other than Denzel Aberdeen — who was out there for 29 minutes in place of injured point guard Jaland Lowe — no UK player was on the court for more than 23 minutes against the Boilermakers.
And, yet, for most of the night, this wasn’t much of a game. It was clear who was going to win.
Freshman guard Jasper Johnson led the Cats with 15 points. He hit three 3-pointers. He showed off his slithery moves at the basket. He flashed that natural skill that made him such a coveted recruit. But he did something more than that.
“I’m really proud of Jasper, because he is trying so hard to learn what we do,” Pope said. “And he’s got a very unique game. He’s got a really unique skill set. And he has committed himself to trying to do what we do, and then letting that part of him that he brings to the game come out through it. Rather than just going to what he does.
“And it’s why he’s growing so much, so fast. He’s clearly a really talented player who’s got a huge future, but he’s going to play well, because he’s trying to do this the way we do it.”
For this collection of talent to go as far as it wants this season, everyone will have to buy in.
Pope knows that will be a season-long endeavor, but he likes what he sees so far.
Exhibit A: Collin Chandler.
The sophomore guard — one of four returnees from last season — logged just two points Friday night, but they were loud ones. He drove the lane and threw down a dunk that ignited an already hot crowd. He was so amped up after that play that he headbutted the ball, leading to a delay of game warning from the officials.
“The dunk was spectacular,” Pope acknowledged. But that’s not what stuck out to him.
The coach pointed to a pair of full-speed cuts that Chandler made, off the ball, relatively early in the game. Pope said those plays prompted the rest of the guys to play the way he wanted.
“He really got us started, and then everyone else saw how that felt,” Pope said. “… It was contagious.”
Chandler also had a plus-15 rating in just 16 minutes of action. “Ridiculous,” Pope said.
Nine other Wildcats had more points Friday night, but …
“He was the highlight for the whole game, for me. I would give him the MVP of the game,” Pope said. “… If this team wants to do something historic, that’s what we need. And we need to champion it, and we need to take pride in it. … He was unbelievable.”
A couple of other things Painter — one of the most respected coaches in college basketball — said after his team’s loss must have been music to Pope’s ears.
“More than anything, I thought they embraced the physicality of the game,” he declared.
And, a little while later: “The tougher team won.”
Last season’s Kentucky team was a lot of things, but few objective observers would have described it like that. Pope and his staff took notice during their first journey through the SEC and constructed this roster with more length, physicality and athleticism.
It showed Friday night. Kentucky outrebounded Purdue 42-30. The Cats outscored the Boilermakers 36-26 in the paint and 14-4 on second-chance points. New acquisition Mouhamed Dioubate was a big part of that, grabbing a game-high nine rebounds and imposing his will in the paint.
“I feel like we got a lot of tough guys on this team,” said starting center Brandon Garrison. “Coach always preaches, ‘We’re gonna go out there and punch first.’ And I feel like we did that tonight.”
They did it without Lowe, a preseason All-SEC selection and one of the most coveted point guards in the transfer portal. He’s out with a shoulder injury, but he should be back soon.
They did it without injured big man Jayden Quaintance, a projected NBA lottery pick. He had surgery to repair a torn ACL in March, but he’s expected to be on the court later this season.
They did it with SEC preseason player of the year Otega Oweh playing just 17 minutes. He still had 10 points. He still made some loud plays. He’ll play a lot more when the real games begin.
What do those asterisks say about the potential of this team at full strength?
“That we’re gonna be lethal,” said freshman center Malachi Moreno. “I think tonight showed that — even though we weren’t healthy — we can still come in waves. And we were missing two really key pieces. So I feel like, once we get them back, we’ll be unstoppable.”
Now’s a good time for a little disclaimer. This was still a preseason game.
Painter acknowledged that Purdue didn’t do much opposition prep for this one. He also noted that neither team put up many roadblocks.
“I don’t think there was a lot of defense out there,” he said. “I don’t think either team is going to get compared to the ’85 Bears right now.”
Pope was left wanting more, in some regards.
“I actually felt like we didn’t play as hard as we’re going to have to play to win consistently,” he said.
Sophomore forward Trent Noah — another returnee from last season — kept a level head.
“I just feel like, after tonight, you just kind of flush it, and you go back in the morning and watch film, because we made plenty of mistakes,” he said. “We can always get better.”
That’s correct. But these Wildcats looked pretty good Friday night.
There’s a long way to go and a lot of growth to experience along the way. Pope knows that as well as anyone. He was co-captain of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team, arguably the greatest squad in program history. He’s well aware of what it takes to make it that far.
Nobody is hanging any banners in October, and to fulfill that dream in April will take sacrifice, and lots of it.
After Pope addressed his team following Friday night’s win, he said he was sitting with his wife, Lee Anne, and looking over the box score. Ten guys with meaningful minutes. No one with more than 15 points. Crooked numbers all over the scoresheet. That looked familiar.
“This feels like my ’96 team, in terms of this point distribution,” he said.
That was 30 years ago. College basketball has changed since then. But this season, with this team, Pope is trying to run it back. And he’s off to a good start.
“Can you do that in ’25-26? Like, can we actually pull it off where we have guys that care so much about each other and so much about Kentucky that they’re willing to do this? We’re going to see. But if we can do it, it’s a really fun way to play, man. It’s pretty special.”
