Why CBS picked this Kentucky basketball team for a Final Four weekend documentary
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- CBS picked Kentucky for its brand, fan base and long CBS relationship.
- Dunham and a small CBS crew got Pope’s trust for intimate access.
- One-hour doc will capture the season’s arc, drama, injuries and resilience.
The scenes are striking.
Kentucky basketball players being booed by their own fans. UK star Otega Oweh addressing message board rumors. Head coach Mark Pope lighting into his team in the Madison Square Garden locker room in one clip and punching a whiteboard in another.
There are also highlight-reel dunks, buzzer beaters and near brawls.
And that’s just the 90-second trailer.
This UK basketball season has been a wild ride, and a crew from CBS Sports has been there from the beginning, chronicling the highs and lows of the Cats’ journey through a once-promising 2025-26 campaign that has been filled with tough times as it enters the home stretch.
Last month, CBS announced that it was producing a one-hour documentary on this Kentucky basketball season that will air on Final Four Saturday, whether the Cats make it that far or not.
Presumably, the longtime television home of the NCAA Tournament had its pick of any team in college basketball for this project. So, why Kentucky?
“Kentucky obviously has a huge fan base, a ton of national appeal,” said Bess Barnes, the vice president of programming at CBS Sports. “They’re a really recognizable brand in college basketball, but also we at CBS Sports have a really long history with them, and so a show like this probably doesn’t happen without that relationship and partnership that we’ve developed over the years.”
CBS has been producing its “Confidential” series for several years. That annual project takes fans inside a few programs every March, starting with Selection Sunday and following along for as long as the team is alive in the NCAA Tournament.
UK was one of the programs selected for the “Confidential” series last year — Pope’s first season with the team — and CBS also featured the Cats in the project during the 2019 and 2022 tournaments.
Laura Dunham was the producer on last year’s Kentucky “Confidential” program. She was working on another CBS project featuring Pope last year, when a conversation with Deb Moore, the primary media coordinator for the UK men’s basketball program, turned to bigger-picture ideas.
Pope had already assembled his roster for the 2025-26 season by that point, a highly talented — and high-priced — collection of returnees, transfer portal additions and other newcomers. The Cats were No. 9 in the Associated Press preseason Top 25 poll — no Final Four lock, by any means — but there was plenty of upside with this group. And the storylines were seemingly endless.
“We had pinpointed, from the beginning of the season, that they had intriguing storylines,” Dunham said. “And we really wanted to pursue that. And in addition — obviously, to the brand — the fan base always garners a lot of interest.”
And that also fit well with what CBS wanted to accomplish.
The actual Final Four matchups — along with the NCAA championship game — will air on TBS, a CBS broadcast partner, this season. But the NCAA Tournament is a premier event for CBS, and the network needed quality programming on its own channel during Final Four weekend.
A full-season documentary about one specific team — something that goes beyond what the “Confidential” series has attempted in the past — was an interesting idea, but to peg such a show for Final Four weekend, it would need to have some staying power.
Obviously, only four teams will still be playing that day. So the project would have to focus on a program that could get eyeballs, even if its season was finished by that point.
Kentucky, the CBS officials acknowledged, is one of the few capable of doing that. The network’s longstanding ties with the program — a relationship that has continued into the Pope era — helped make the idea a reality. And UK’s trust and familiarity with Dunham and her crew, specifically, allowed for the necessary access to make a project like this one work.
“Coach Pope has been incredible, in terms of access with us,” she said. “And I just go back to the level of trust that our crew has gained with him, in addition to everyone else on the team. And that’s really where it starts.
“For me as a producer, I think the locker room … is a sacred space, and he’s been really great, in terms of letting us in that space. And all the other ‘Confidential’ teams that we worked with in the past, throughout this project, have also been really receptive to the idea of us being in there and capturing those moments, as well.”
‘Ups and downs’ of UK basketball
The documentary will air at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 4, on CBS and Paramount+.
The 90-second teaser that CBS released last month shows scenes from the locker room, weight room, bus rides, practices and shootarounds. There are one-on-one sitdown interviews with Pope and other UK players. In one clip, Collin Chandler is recounting some of the angst around the team while driving in his car. Other shots show Oweh and Brandon Garrison in their homes.
“You’re going to really see a glimpse into the life of an athlete and what that looks like,” Dunham said. “And sort of behind the scenes, you know, access to practice, to team meetings, travel, things of that nature. But then some off-the-court things, too. We’ve had access to players in their homes and family members. I think you’re going to get to see into life of an athlete.”
To remain as unintrusive as possible, the crew was kept small.
In addition to Dunham, the producer of the doc, there’s Ryan Newman (director of photography) and Mike Steinberg (cinematographer). And that’s the core group on the ground.
“They’re really used to us,” Dunham said of UK’s team. “And something we — and myself included — do on purpose that’s very intentional is we like to keep our footprint really small, out of respect for the team, to make sure that we stay out of their way so they can do their jobs.
“You know, we’re really just trying to capture what is going on, and that’s done purposely by us to make sure that everyone is comfortable and that you really —in a perfect scenario — don’t realize there are cameras around.”
Behind the scenes, longtime UK basketball officials have talked about how smoothly the process has gone, with the documentary crew staying out of the way while also capturing some of the most dramatic and intimate moments of this tumultuous season.
“Our production team is the absolute best in the business when it comes to this type of content,” said Barnes, the CBS VP of programming. “And the fact that they are doing this as a sort of ‘fly on the wall’ allows us to really get in and show the emotion and the team dynamics that are really unique to college basketball, especially during March Madness.”
There’s been plenty of emotion throughout this Kentucky basketball season.
It obviously didn’t go the way many expected, with key injuries to Jaland Lowe, Jayden Quaintance and Kam Williams putting a damper on those lofty expectations and the Cats wrapping up the regular season with a 19-12 record and 10-8 mark in SEC play.
The CBS crew was around for many of the biggest moments, including early losses to Louisville, Michigan State and Gonzaga that put UK fans on edge. The loss to the Spartans came in Madison Square Garden, where Pope was despondent afterward. Kentucky fans in Nashville booed the Cats throughout their 35-point defeat at the hands of the Zags in December.
There have been high points, too, and Dunham and her crew have been around for those times as well. Everyone involved with Kentucky basketball hopes the best times are yet to come.
CBS will be with the Cats every step of the way through March Madness, from the Selection Sunday show to the final buzzer of the last game, whenever that might be. If Kentucky can make a magical run to the Final Four, its season won’t yet be complete when the documentary airs.
Whatever happens, this season will be difficult to cut down to one hour of TV time.
“As you can imagine, the edit process is going to be a fun one,” Dunham said with a smile. “But we’re just going to keep going as long as they go, and it’ll reflect their journey, as long as they make it. So we will keep editing until we can no longer edit. And really up until the end.”
As far as the finished product, Dunham hopes it shows all sides of this Kentucky season and gives fans back home a better understanding of this UK basketball team. She spoke of the “drama of sports” and the effect it can have on those who follow.
“It’s an incredible thing, in that it has ups and downs,” Dunham said. “And adversity is a huge part of that. And I think, in that, you see the human side of people and how they respond to adversity. And I would just love for fans to take away the hard work of student athletes. You know, what they go through, day in and day out over a long season. And you’ll definitely see that.”
