For Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball team, this might be the most important thing

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Ask anyone associated with the 2024-25 Kentucky basketball team how Mark Pope’s first roster of Wildcats is coming together, and you’re sure to get the same reply.

Splendidly, or some variation thereof, is the stock answer.

Perhaps the biggest question mark surrounding Pope’s first season as UK’s head coach — can he really win big with an entirely new group of players? — isn’t much of a question at all to those on the inside. And it didn’t take these Cats long to come to that conclusion.

Kentucky’s 2024-25 roster currently features 12 scholarship players. Nine are transfers from other schools. Three will be college freshmen. None of the 12 have ever been teammates, none have ever played for UK, and just one has ever been coached by Pope.

That’s a whole lot of new, as anyone following this program already knows.

Yet ask any of those Wildcats — and all of them have indeed been asked — how things are going so far, and the responses have been pretty much the same. Things are going great, they say. Guys are getting along off the court. They’re figuring each other out on the court. And it’s all happening remarkably quickly, considering the circumstances.

“I mean, it’s challenging,” said fifth-year point guard Kerr Kriisa. “That’s why we have the summer. If we didn’t have the summer, it would be super hard.”

If these Cats put together a successful season, they might look back on this summer as the biggest reason.

In the not-too-distant past, college basketball programs were not permitted to participate in organized team activities of any kind over the summer, even though all of the coaches and most of the next season’s roster were all on campus during that time. Players played pickup games and worked out among themselves. Coaches pined for the day they could join them in the gym.

Finally, in 2012, the NCAA allowed coaches and players to share the practice court in the summer. Back then, every team organized its offseason workouts a little differently. The rule change that permitted those summer practices has gone through some tweaks over the years, and now — with every coach in America looking for whatever edge he can find — everyone is taking full advantage.

NCAA rules allow for four hours per week of organized practices over an eight-week period. Kentucky wrapped up its summer session this month, and while the transfer portal has led to massive roster turnover across the country, these Wildcats might win the prize for least familiar with themselves. That goes for the coaching staff, too.

Of Pope’s five assistants, only one (Cody Fueger) has served on any of his previous coaching staffs. Of Pope’s 12 scholarship players, only one (Jaxson Robinson) has played for him in the past.

“Everything’s new here,” Fueger told the Herald-Leader during the first week of summer practice. “The only thing that I know for sure is Coach Pope and Jaxson Robinson right now.”

Vote: How many games will Kentucky basketball win in Mark Pope’s debut season?

A couple of weeks later, Robinson echoed the uniqueness of the situation. And — though summer practice was still at its halfway point at the time — he liked what he was seeing.

“We’re all going through the same thing,” Robinson said. “Doesn’t matter, like, the age or anything. We’re all new here, just trying to figure out the ropes. This is a new space for everybody. But everybody’s been on the same page, willing to learn. Everybody’s been taking criticism very well. So I think that’s probably going to be the thing that makes us one of the best teams when it’s said and done, just because of everybody’s willingness to get better.

“Coach Pope always preaches that. And I feel like this group’s really receptive to it.”

The way Kentucky plays

Obviously, team chemistry is always an important aspect of winning basketball. But the way Pope wants his Wildcats to play makes it especially important for his players to be on the same page.

The innovative offense that Pope and Fueger brought from BYU to Kentucky incorporates a lot of five-out looks, ample movement and active play away from the ball. That means thinking on the fly, recognizing openings and knowing exactly where your teammates will be.

“It’s free flowing,” explained Robinson, the only UK player to ever play in it. “There’s a lot that you can do out of it — a lot of choices, a lot of decisions. It’s reactionary. It’s not necessarily sets. Just being able to make decisions, make reads and play unselfishly with your teammates. It’s a great offense for him.”

BYU’s offense was 14th nationally in efficiency last season, according to the KenPom ratings, and the roster Pope and his staff have put together at UK is projected to be even more talented — and possibly even better suited to play that style.

But these Cats have to learn it first, and that’s what made this summer so crucial. The experience, many of the newcomers said, has been freeing.

“You’re not like in a square,” said Kriisa, a dynamic, playmaking guard from Estonia. “You make your own reads with your teammates, depending on how the defense plays. You don’t have a coach screaming at you on the sidelines saying, ‘Run horns down. Horns up.’ …

“Literally everything is reads.”

That, according to all of these Cats, is a fun way to play. And while getting timing and terminology down has taken some trial and error, the way UK’s offense is designed can actually speed up the process, as long as everyone is locked in.

“I think we’re meshing really, really well,” said fifth-year college guard Koby Brea. “I think the system that Coach has in place for us really helps us kind of create a bond faster than usual. Just because, you know, we gotta play off each other and really learn how to read each other’s minds and stuff like that.”

The speed at which it’s coming together is, according to the players, perhaps the biggest surprise of the summer. Freshman Trent Noah credited the coaching staff with finding the right mix of talent and team-oriented players.

“They strategically picked us to be together, and you can tell that,” he said. “I think the chemistry and the style of play and the way we play together — it just meshes and goes together super, super easy.”

Amari Williams, another fifth-year college player and perhaps the team’s most likely starting center, was quick to mention that chemistry when asked for his biggest takeaway of the summer.

“Just how quickly we learn and how quickly we’re adapting to the offense,” he said. “I feel like, as time goes on, that’s something we’re going to be able to read more and just kind of understand without having to break it down. So once we get the hang of that and it gets flowing, I don’t really see many teams stopping it.”

To Williams’ point, no matter how quickly these Cats feel like they’re coming together, the exactness of decision-making and playmaking within Pope’s offense means this will remain a work in progress. There is room for improvement, and that will be the case from now until Kentucky plays the final game on its 2024-25 schedule.

“Since this is all kind of new to us, I think we’re still trying to learn it,” Brea said. “And a big part of our offense is being able to play off of your teammate. So we’re still learning each other, whether it’s through eye contact or body movements. So I feel like the more we keep continuing to learn each other, the better it’s going to be for us.”

‘A lot of goofballs’

“Everybody knows that you win most of the games off the court. You really do,” Kriisa said.

This is a mentality that stems from Pope and has been adopted and articulated by several veterans on his first Kentucky team.

Even as he was still adding players to that roster, Pope talked repeatedly about the urgency to “speed-fuse” relationships once everybody arrived in Lexington, and he spoke of the importance of his new players doing as much as possible off the court to ensure better chemistry on it.

“This stuff is super, super important, and it goes into winning a lot,” Kriisa said. “A lot.”

Even before the summer practice sessions tipped off, that process had begun.

Wake Forest transfer Andrew Carr — yet another fifth-year college player and someone often pointed to as an early leader on this team — said the team lodge quickly became an important bonding area for this band of newcomers. Carr talked of playing ping pong and pool at the lodge while getting to know his teammates.

Early on, there were multiple trips to the bowling alley. Eating out as a group was a common occurrence. A few players brought their golf clubs to campus check-in, and the Cats often hit the links together, sometimes with nearly every member of the team playing at the same time.

Williams, who is from England and — having spent the past four seasons at Drexel University in Philadelphia — has rarely had the opportunity to visit his family back home, spoke of quickly finding a new family in Lexington.

“I’m just glad how well we’re bonding,” he said. … “I think we’ve bonded quicker than many people would think.”

Why is that?

“I’m not sure,” Williams acknowledged. “I just feel like we all just kind of speak to each other, kind of get to know each other. You know, we’re always joking around in the locker room. I feel like it’s just something — the camaraderie — like basketball just brings sometimes.”

When asked if this was simply a “good mix” of players, Williams agreed.

“I think that’s what it is,” he said. “We’re all a good group of people.”

Brea put it in more direct terms.

“We’ve got a lot of goofballs on the team,” he said.

An example: Brea said that Lamont Butler — yet another fifth-year college player and the Wildcat most often cited as the team’s leader — came up with a “game” where every time a player sits down, he has to rub his head. If the player forgets, any other player in his vicinity has the right to smack him in the head.

That might not sound like much fun, but Brea was laughing as he explained the process. He added that he forgot about it 10 minutes before his interview session, and Butler was the first one to whack him in the head.

“We all love each other and we’re like one big family,” Brea said of a group that had been together for only a matter of weeks. “I’m super excited.”

Pope lays the foundation

The necessary process of coming together as a team has been most facilitated, these Wildcats say, by the man who brought them together in the first place. Of course, that starts with those players — especially the older ones — coming in with a willingness to work as one.

The nine transfers on this team came to Lexington with a combined 30 seasons of college basketball experience. In all, the group has already played for 16 head coaches across 13 different programs.

“Sometimes you get veteran players, and they’re less malleable and less coachable — and they kind of have done what they’ve done, and they do what they do, and they’re less responsive,” Pope said. “The thing that’s been surprising — these guys have been incredibly willing to just grab onto any instruction, and really run with it. …

“It’s really wonderful to see these veteran guys and how excited they are to grow and learn. And how willing they are to try new things.”

From young to old, the players say the environment Pope has created is a big reason for that.

“What’s so cool about what Coach Pope is emphasizing with us is we are coaching each other,” said freshman Collin Chandler. “They’ll have us huddle up. ‘What are you guys seeing? What did you guys see on that play?’ And we’re able to talk and coach each other, no matter who it is. I’ve been coached by everybody from Trent Noah to Brandon Garrison to Lamont Butler. From all different ages and experiences. Everybody’s there to coach each other, which is really cool.”

If there’s a mishap on the court — an unforced turnover, for instance — Pope will bring the players involved together and ask what went wrong. If they’re not on the same page, the players will go off to the side to talk it out themselves and report back.

Butler was asked if there was any hesitancy for these Wildcats to speak up in early practice sessions, which would have been understandable, given that unfamiliarity across the roster. He said that wasn’t the case.

“I think Coach Pope does a great job of giving us freedom to go out there and talk to each other,” Butler said. “He wants us to be a player-led team, to where we’re leading each other. And guys have been very receptive to leadership, especially younger guys. I give them credit for that. They’ve accepted the things that we’re saying. And also us being a veteran group, people understand what the goal is, what the assignment is. So it’s never personal. We’re just all trying to get better and help each other.”

Williams, who was the first transfer to commit to Kentucky after Pope took the job, used the word “genuine” to describe his new coach. The person he encountered on the recruiting trail is the same person who has been leading the Cats in summer practice sessions.

That assessment of Pope was another common thread among these UK players, and it’s not always the case in high-level college basketball.

“What you see is what you get, man. There’s no false advertising with him,” Brea said. “You know, he’s an amazing human being. Every time you see him, he’s gonna have a big smile on his face — super energetic. It’s just good to be around a guy like him every single day. He brings the best out of you. He has great energy. And you’re always going to be positive around him.

“He’s not going to put you down. He might do it for a second, you know, but it’s always to help you. He’s been amazing to me so far, and I know he’s been amazing to the group. And I think he’s going to shock a lot of people.”

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