‘We find joy in growing.’ How an LDS parable connects to Kentucky basketball
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky leaned on Hugh B. Brown’s currant-bush parable as a pruning-to-growth motif.
- Pope framed team setbacks as necessary pruning that drives resilience and future growth.
- Kentucky rallied from large deficits in consecutive games, signaling endurance and repair.
Ahead of Kentucky’s comeback victory at rival Tennessee, Collin Chandler brought the parable of the currant bush to Mark Pope.
Chandler and Pope — both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — resonate deeply with the concept of the story, which was originally published 53 years ago by longtime Church leader President Hugh B. Brown.
The story, per local Lexington Church leader Drew Millar, references “this whole idea that, ‘Hey, through pruning, right, and through cutting it back, you enable further growth.’”
Saturday’s Kentucky win over Tennessee marked the second-straight game in which the Wildcats had come back from a deficit of at least 17 points and, against the odds, came out with the victory; the ESPN broadcast noted how it was the first time since 2017’s Florida Atlantic Owls that a program had successfully overcome trailing by at least 15 points in consecutive wins.
In his postgame press conference, Pope referenced his conversation with Chandler about the parable, and how it relates to the journey, and goals, of this year’s Kentucky Wildcats.
“Collin Chandler shared with me a Church talk about the currant bush,” Pope said.”Which is so, it so exactly hits our team on exactly about what we are about, getting cut down and growing back better, and what we can become because we’ve been cut down.”
Brown, who was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake City, recalls in the parable a time on his own farm in Canada where he pruned back an overgrown currant bush in hopes of it bearing fruit when it grew back.
When Brown describes cutting down the overgrown bush — which he wrote as having “grown up over 6 feet (2 meters) high,” and “going all to wood,” without any blossoms or currents to be seen — he thought he saw the bush begin to cry, and asked it the reason for its tears.
“‘How could you do this to me?’” Brown wrote of what he thought he heard the bush say in response, “‘I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.’”
Brown spoke back to what he thought he’d heard, and said “I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush.”
“Someday’” Brown said to the bush. “... you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”
When asked to speak more on Tuesday about why the parable resonated with him, and why he believes it’s easy to connect the lesson to this year’s roster — the majority of which are not Latter-day Saints — Pope likened the concept of ‘growing back better’ to weightlifting.
“It’s a faith-driven story, of course,” Pope said. “And I’m a believer, 100%. And on a simply athletic level, this is the way that it works. We actually do this as athletes. You know, we go in the weight room to literally tear down our muscle so that it will grow back stronger, right? And if we’re really blessed in this life, in some ways, we find joy in growing in life. And you grow by facing adversity and challenges. It’s just a very simple principle, but, for me as a person that relies so much on my faith, it’s incredibly comforting to know that when I’m facing adversity, it’s really not the end of the story. It’s just a necessary part of the process.”
After a 24-12 (10-8 SEC) first season under Pope last season, the head coach quickly re-tooled his team — and expectations were high, both from the typically-optimistic fan base, and also from the national media, which pegged this year’s Wildcats as a top-10 team in the Associated Press men’s college basketball Top-25 preseason poll.
Though UK had lost several players to the NBA Draft, the transfer portal and exhausted eligibility, Pope’s squad had plenty of shining storylines to follow.
Otega Oweh, who led last year’s team in points and steals per game, would return for another go, armed with insight gained at pre-NBA Draft workouts, another offseason of strength training and development and the responsibility of being the elder-statesman.
Pope secured high-profile signings from former Pittsburgh point guard Jaland Lowe, and 2023 McDonald’s All-American, former Arizona State forward Jayden Quaintance and 2025 national champion, former Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen, among others. Pope had also managed to sign a pair of highly-recruited Kentuckians in Jasper Johnson and Malachi Moreno.
When the Wildcats defeated preseason No. 1 Purdue by double digits in their first true exhibition game, Big Blue Nation rejoiced, and excited whispers of a possible SEC title and the program’s ninth national championship grew louder.
Reality struck soon after, quieting those hopeful words with negativity, as it often does.
Kentucky fell in its second exhibition, this one to Georgetown, lost five of its first six matchups against ranked opponents (including Louisville, North Carolina and Gonzaga) and opened conference play 0-2 with losses at Alabama and to Missouri.
Now sitting at 12-6 (3-2 SEC) entering Wednesday’s home game against Texas, Kentucky finds itself in an awkward spot; UK is finally winning must-win games, and has built a three-game winning streak against power conference opponents for the first time this season in Mississippi State, LSU and Tennessee.
Pope said, “It’s weird, but that’s the Kentucky way right now.”
To say the team isn’t ‘winning pretty,’ would be an understatement, but the team is still winning.
Though the Wildcats led Mississippi State for more than half the game en route to a 24-point victory, they had to overcome a deficit of as many as 12 points in the first half. Kentucky beat LSU on a Moreno buzzer beater, and its comeback victory marked the largest during the Mark Pope era (18 points), nearly tied in the next game, the aforementioned feat against Tennessee.
“Our team knows how to respond,” Chandler said following the Tennessee win. “I think today was a perfect example of that. This week has been a perfect example of that. So, I’m proud of the guys and how we respond. We’re never too low. … We’ve been preparing for times like this. We’ve been in times like this this season. So there was no panic whatsoever. We knew what we had to do.”
Falling short in rivalry games in the face of sky-high expectations. Losing at home in front of a frustrated — and, on several occasions, a booing — Big Blue Nation. Injuries hindered Lowe and Quaintance, and therefore also hindered Pope and his staff’s ability to create much lineup continuity.
It’s fair to label Kentucky ‘pruned.’
During a discussion about the widespread appeal of Hugh’s parable of the currant bush, and if the story was commonly looked to by Church members as a means of encouragement through adversity, Millar clarified that, though many may not be familiar with the specific piece published back in 1973, the concept of “growing more from defeat than from victory,” highlighted moments throughout LDS scripture which encourage followers to “keep going even when times are difficult.”
“I think if you know a whole bunch of Latter-day Saints in Lexington or elsewhere, and you ask them about the parable of the currant bush, a fair number of them may not be able to tell you what exactly that is,” Millar said. “But the concept of, you know, ‘who God loves, God chastens,’ and this whole idea of getting better by being cut back and by being challenged, is definitely something that is leaned on.”
In the story, Brown describes an instance of his own pruning as not being appointed as a general in the British Canadian army. He found himself “with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul,” and felt like a failure.
Over the course of this season, Pope has, at several moments, acknowledged that he and his team were underperforming by their own standards, and by the standards of Big Blue Nation.
After the Wildcats’ Dec. 2 loss to North Carolina, a 67-64 heartbreaker, Pope called disappointing rebounding and 3-point shooting performances “uncharacteristic,” of who he knows the team to be, and said “We just have to find a way to break through, and have the discipline to do it.”
Following UK’s Dec. 5 thrashing by Gonzaga in Nashville, Pope called the booing of his team by their own fans “incredibly well-deserved.”
Pope even made a controversial joke to the media in the days after Kentucky’s loss to Missouri, saying, “There’s no time for indulging in feeling terrible. I spent a lot of time feeling like I’d like to curl up in bed and kill myself, but that’s actually not what we do.”
Regardless if you’re a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a follower of another faith, an agnostic or an atheist, we have all been cut down.
The reason for the pruning is up for debate, possibly unknowable or difficult to understand, and will almost certainly never be agreed upon, but strife and deep pain have in no small measure characterized humanity, and its art, for millennia.
Why does Batman seem to have an unending crop of villains working to take over Gotham City? Why did Ricky have to die in “Boyz n the Hood?” Why wasn’t there room for Jack on the makeshift raft in “Titanic?”
Why did Mount Vesuvius bury Pompeii? Why do our loved ones get sick? Why do some of us struggle to support our families?
Adversity can be silly, like a comic book villain with a penchant for wearing clown makeup and a purple suit who calls himself the Joker.
Adversity can also be devastating, and leave us heartbroken, bitter and feeling like a failure.
It may not always make sense to compare personal hardship to a college basketball team still trying to find its footing in late-January. But when Pope said he understands why Kentucky fans are frustrated with and disappointed in him and his players, he related to a group of people that care deeply about the program.
As former Kentucky star John Pelphrey put it after his Tennessee Tech team lost at Rupp Arena Nov. 26, there are fans for whom the world stops when the Wildcats take the floor.
“I can remember, we had TV, we had more than one channel,” Pelphrey recalled. “But if Kentucky played at 1:00 on a Saturday at Auburn against Charles Barkley, Chuck Person, Chris Morris. You had Dickie Beal and ‘Dinner Bell’ Mel and Charlie Hurt. We were all watching it. We were all watching it. And by 3:30, we’re either on the playground, or we’re in the gym, trying to do what those guys did. …. I don’t know if it’s us, I don’t know if it’s my parents. It’s kind of like my Lord and Savior. I don’t know when he showed up, I just know he’s there. It’s kind of the way you feel about this program.
“We love our family. We know we’ve got to work to provide for that family. What’s going on with the Cats?”
When Pope considers the story of the currant bush in the context of coaching Kentucky basketball, he views it as another aspect of his life, another responsibility and journey he’s taking on that will certainly feature moments of struggle, but that struggle doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
“I believe that for our team, when we’re facing adversity, it’s not the end of the story,” Pope said. “It’s a necessary, painful, part of the process for us to actually become something great. It’s my whole life as an athlete. It’s my life as a parent and a husband, and it’s everything that I’ve lived through. So it rings true to me, and I believe that it brings you incredible peace when you’re going through the adversity, right? Just to know that there’s a purpose, and the purpose is all about growing and learning.”
Pope’s perspective of “the purpose,” of hardship won’t resonate with everyone, nor does it have to. It may not even resonate with the entirety of his staff, or with all 16 of his players.
But, just as is the case with so many things, it’s less about the particular hardship, and more about the response. In that way — it’s a common cliché in sports, but it’s a cliché for a reason — basketball is a lot like life.
During the same media availability where Pope joked about contemplating suicide, the head coach expressed his appreciation for the similarities between the lessons taught to you by sports and the lessons necessary to endure struggle in life.
“One of the things I love about sports is that it teaches you that you have to (persist),” Pope said. “It doesn’t matter how bad things get. You can’t go back and rewrite what happened. You can just write the end of the story because history tells the story, to make it something that it’s not. Right now, it’s like the worst moment, the lowest point, all the stuff. And it always does. This never goes away. It’s always the next thing you do is gonna rewrite what happened before.”
Pope and his team, a currant bush in their own right, cannot change the fact that they’ve been pruned.
They cannot replay their six losses in an attempt to change the ending, or undo Lowe’s season-ending, lingering shoulder injury or render Quaintance’s knee swelling a non-issue. But Pope, Chandler and the rest of the Wildcats believe in the growth of this year’s Kentucky team, messy as it may be.
There is no one reason why the program has struggled. There is no telling where Kentucky goes from here, or what its ceiling actually is this season. Whatever it may be, Pope said he’s having fun witnessing the growth of his players, that it inspires him and that he truly hopes Big Blue Nation is witnessing it, too.
“What it says about these guys’ resilience and toughness is, I hope nobody’s missing it,” Pope said. “I hope people aren’t missing it. I hope they’re not missing what this group is going through, what this group is trying to endure, what this group is trying to become and what this group is actually doing on the court for three straight SEC games now. Come into halftime down heavy, and things looking bad, and everybody being discouraged except for the players in our locker room.
“That’s really special, man. So don’t miss it. Because it’s a tribute to these guys.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
