These Wildcats needed to be more physical. Boxing exercises have helped
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky basketball goes through boxing exercises before practice and games.
- The exercises help the Wildcats’ bigs establish a physical tone prior to competition.
- UK has won eight of its last nine games and sits in second place in the SEC standings.
There’s been a different look to this Kentucky basketball team over the past three games.
In the aftermath of UK’s embarrassing 25-point loss at Vanderbilt on Jan. 27, head coach Mark Pope knew things needed to change. Specifically, he needed more physicality from his interior players.
Kentucky’s rotation of bigs has been down to just four players for more than a month now.
Junior forwards Mo Dioubate and Brandon Garrison, sophomore forward Andrija Jelavic and freshman center Malachi Moreno are tasked with holding things down on the inside. Sophomore forward Jayden Quaintance — a projected lottery pick in this summer’s NBA draft — hasn’t played for the Cats since Jan. 7 and has missed nine straight contests due to issues with his surgically repaired knee.
Reinforcements weren’t coming. UK’s post players needed to find a way to unlock extra physicality all on their own.
The Wildcats turned to boxing for help.
After last week’s win over Oklahoma, as Jelavic was speaking to reporters about his own personal progression this season, he was briefly interrupted by a passing UK assistant coach.
“Tell ‘em about the boxing gloves. Tell ‘em about the boxing gloves.”
So, the Herald-Leader asked Jelavic about the boxing gloves.
Jelavic explained that a new UK basketball routine — implemented prior to practices and games — involves warming up with a boxing exercise led by assistant coach Mikhail McLean, who works closely with UK’s big men.
“It’s the first thing we do when we walk into the gym,” Jelavic said of the boxing drill.
It doesn’t stop there. Once the boxing session is over, Kentucky’s bigs rumble through a gauntlet — Moreno referred to it as a “tunnel of doom” — of UK staffers holding pads, with the goal of making a layup while under duress.
While it’s not the sole reason for success, UK is 3-0 since the start of its physicality focused warmup.
In its wins over Arkansas and Oklahoma, UK enjoyed advantages in rebounding and second-chance points. Despite Tennessee outrebounding Kentucky by 15 boards Saturday night, the Wildcats crushed the Volunteers in points in the paint (44-24) and still managed to win second-chance points (14-12). Kentucky also played stellar second-half defense in the comeback win.
“You have to get yourself to a place where you can still execute, you can still make decisions and make reads, but you’re just embracing physicality,” Pope said last week. “It’s kind of a response to all those things that has been good for our guys. Just to give them permission, actually, to embrace in the physicality of the battle and to do it from the very first possession.”
This is part of a larger stretch in which the Wildcats have won eight of nine games to vault up to second place in the SEC standings.
“The breakout was the Arkansas game, when we were really emphasizing us starting physically and hitting guys. Like, they’re not even meant to be hit at that moment, from the start,” Jelavic said. “That’s when the boxing gloves started and everything. I just found some situations when I can punch a guy, make contact with a guy, that isn’t being seen by the referees. But it means a lot to our team, even when you sometimes make a foul.”
Moreno, who continues to impress with his all-around play as a freshman, corroborated Jealvic’s account of the way Kentucky is using boxing to its advantage.
“When we go into practice, Coach McLean will wear these little boxing gloves on his hands, and he’s just like ‘Hit me,’” Moreno said. “I think it’s just to emphasize, when we go into these games, we gotta hit people, we gotta hit, we gotta go get the rebounds and we got to bring the physicality to them and not let it be the other way.”
The goal of the activity is simple: To provide Kentucky’s bigs with the physical edge that they, along with their teammates, lacked in that Vanderbilt loss, and to better prepare the Cats to take on the role of the aggressor.
But it’s also become a way for UK’s players to blow off some steam.
“I think at this point we’ve just started having fun with hitting each other in practice,” Moreno said. “... Sometimes you can just let out a little anger here and there, but it’s just a lot of fun, and that’s just what we do.”
Maintaining this physical approach will be key to Kentucky’s chances of finishing the regular season strong and securing a double bye in next month’s SEC Tournament.
Six of UK’s final seven regular season contests will come against teams currently ranked in the top 40 in KenPom. South Carolina is the lone exception.
This includes two games against Florida, starting with Saturday afternoon’s Top 25 showdown in Gainesville. The defending NCAA champions and current SEC leaders boast junior center Rueben Chinyelu, one of the most physical players in college basketball, who averages more than 11 rebounds per game.
As a team, the Gators lead the nation in rebounding differential (an average of plus-15 per contest).
The hope is that, with the assistance of the new boxing routine, Kentucky is ready to meet the physical challenge in any game right from the jump.
“It’s a feeling as a player. You walk into a cold gym, and you get warmed up and loose, and you do all this stuff by yourself. And then the first possession, all of a sudden, there’s the collision of contact,” Pope said. “It’s a violent, vicious (collision) that you don’t actually experience in warmups because everyone’s trying to keep each other safe. Once the game starts, nobody’s trying to keep anybody safe. So sometimes it takes you a moment to get in there. I think things like that are helping our guys. I really do.”
