One new Kentucky Wildcat went from a wheelchair to the nation’s top 3-point shooter

ben roberts

Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:42 p.m.·9 min read

For the first few weeks of Kentucky’s summer basketball practice sessions, Koby Brea was mostly relegated to the sidelines, in recovery mode from an old injury, forced to watch as his new teammates worked through the ins and outs of Mark Pope’s system.

Arguably the nation’s top 3-point shooter, Brea was little more than an observer as Pope and the new UK coaching staff implemented an offense designed to feature a player just like him. When Brea picked Kentucky out of the transfer portal in the spring, he couldn’t wait to jump in, get to work and put up shots.

Once practice began, all he could do was wait.

“It definitely sucks at first, not being out there,” Brea said Tuesday afternoon. “I was watching practice every single day, and I’m just like, ‘Man, I want to be out there so bad. It just looks so fun.’ But it’s part of the process. You gotta be patient during those times and just try to learn anything you can and try to engage with your teammates. …

“I’m just glad to finally be able to be on the court and do what I love.”

He knows it could’ve been much worse.

The past two summers, Brea didn’t get to play basketball at all.

As a sophomore at Dayton, the 6-foot-6 guard from Washington Heights, New York, was the Atlantic-10 Sixth Man of the Year, averaging 8.1 points and shooting 42.3% from 3-point range for a team that finished second in the league.

Brea (pronounced BRAY-ah) had been playing through pain, and he learned after that season that he had stress fractures in both of his legs. He chose a non-surgical route, which necessitated lots of rest and basically erased any kind of offseason preparation. He was out for four months of workouts and practices, and his recovery stretched into the beginning of his junior year, leading to missed games.

His numbers that season took a step back — 6.8 points per game, despite more playing time, and 37.0% from 3-point range — and as the 2022-23 campaign progressed, the pain came back.

After the season, he made the decision to undergo surgery. Metal rods were inserted into both of his legs last April, and Brea spent the next several weeks in a wheelchair.

“People don’t know much about the whole process last year,” Brea said. “So, yeah, the first two months I was in a wheelchair. I couldn’t do nothing. Then, the next two months, I was on a walker. And then crutches. And so I literally came back for my first workout two weeks before the season. So I only had two weeks to really get some work, and get my body feeling right — to a place where I could actually play.

“And then, you know, once the games started rolling, it kind of gets a little crazy. But I was able to manage it all.”

Not only did he manage it, he thrived.

Koby Brea made 100 3-pointers at Dayton last season, shooting at a 49.8% rate from long range.

Brea averaged a career-high 29.1 minutes, appearing in all 33 games for a Dayton team that finished a game out of first place in the A-10 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Of the 105 Division I college basketball players who averaged 2.5 made 3-pointers per game last season, no one shot the ball better than Brea, who hit at a 49.8% rate. Only one other such player — Belmont’s Cade Tyson, who shot 46.5% from deep — made more than 45% of his 3-point attempts. (UK’s Antonio Reeves was fourth on that list at 44.7%.)

With one season of eligibility remaining, Brea hit the transfer portal, in search of a bigger stage for his last year of college basketball. His list of finalists: Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and UConn, the two-time defending national champions. It doesn’t get any more blue-blood than that.

While Pope was still settling in as Kentucky’s new coach, he had gained the reputation as an innovative, risk-taking offensive mind, and — along with assistant coach Cody Fueger — adopted a style last season at BYU that saw the Cougars shoot 32.0 3-pointers per game, the second-most in all of college basketball.

“That was the biggest drive for me, coming here — just seeing how perfect the system is for me,” Brea said. “And Coach Pope did a great job of explaining that to me — where I can excel in the offense, and then just excel in his system, in general. … I’m really excited, not only for me, but man, we have shooters all over the court. So it’s going to be hard for the team to stop one person, because they’re gonna have to worry about four others at the same time.”

‘He can shoot it’

Fueger, who is described as Pope’s offensive coordinator and is going on his 10th year as an assistant under the new UK head coach, said earlier this offseason that his goal for these Wildcats will be 35 3-point attempts per game.

No team in college basketball has shot that many 3s since the 2018-19 season, but — judging from early practice reports and the personnel Pope and company have assembled — these UK coaches are serious about the goal.

Brea will be a key to achieving it.

Fueger explained to the Herald-Leader in June that a lot of those shots will come in transition, and he immediately started rattling off Brea’s advanced scoring statistics in such scenarios.

“That dude’s gonna be running his tail off to get 3s off,” Fueger concluded.

At that point in the summer, Brea was still sidelined from practices. Fueger had watched plenty of film on the 21-year-old with 113 career college games under his belt, but he said he would need to work with him more to find out what exactly made him such a tremendous 3-point threat.

“I need some more time with him in person,” Fueger said. “But, he spends a lot of time in the gym. That’s super important. And we were just talking about it as a staff — the reason why people are successful is because of work. There’s no trainer that makes you an NBA player. There’s no coach that makes you an NBA player. Or a big-time shooter. … He puts in a lot of work. That’s super important to him.”

That’s partly what made those first few weeks of UK’s summer practices so unbearable.

Brea entered his name in the NBA draft, but he and his advisers decided not to go through some of the typical predraft activities. Following a senior season in which he played as much as he ever had — and coming off two offseasons in which he didn’t get to play at all — Brea decided it was best to take a little break in anticipation of his final year of college.

“A big part of why I backed out of the draft and everything — I didn’t do a lot of my workouts — is I just wanted to make sure that I was completely healthy going into this new year,” he said. “And kind of something that me and my agent talked about after the season. I wasn’t feeling too great, and we were just like, ‘You know what, let’s take a step back so we could take a couple steps forward later on.’ And we just took some time off to finally heal from my previous injury, and I’m feeling a lot better now. So I’m really glad that I did that.”

As UK’s video team began posting snippets of early practice sessions on social media, astute observers within the Wildcats’ fan base noticed that Brea wasn’t on the court. In some, he could be seen in the background, clearly not fully participating. Alarm bells went off.

It wasn’t much fun to watch at the time, but — now that he’s back and playing basketball again — Brea could laugh Tuesday about the level of enthusiasm that was concentrated on him.

“It just goes to show what kind of fans we have, and they’re really invested in us, and they want to know every single little thing,” he said. “I kind of love that. I’m not gonna lie. I like that our fans are really engaged and they want to know more about us in the program. Because, later on, we will be representing them and putting on for them. So I’m glad it’s like that.”

On more than one occasion this offseason, Pope has referred to Brea as “the most efficient offensive player in the last decade in college basketball” and gleefully talked about how exciting it will be to coach him. Various analytics — something this UK staff pays close attention to — show how valuable Brea can be as a scorer. Both sides are eager for what comes next.

“He’s a perfect fit for us,” Pope said recently.

Brea was all smiles when discussing UK’s new offense — “fun and fast” was his description — and spoke of the way Pope and Fueger’s approach could help him as a playmaker for others and transform him into more of an all-around player. He also talked about a desire to improve defensively, which would be an area of concentration as he looks toward a possible NBA future.

He said it was “absolutely amazing” to join his new teammates on the practice floor these past couple of weeks and talked up the team’s chemistry in the early going, always a concern with an entirely new roster but one that apparently hasn’t popped up as summer practice nears its end.

Brea’s new coaches are certainly glad to have him out there, too. A few months ago, he could have gone anywhere on that blue-blood list. He was one of the most coveted transfers in the portal, and — in a game that’s becoming more predicated on perimeter success — for good reason.

“Obviously, he can shoot it,” Fueger said. “… He can do the special sauce that — really, what it takes to win. He can make shots. He’s bigger than you think. He’s a legit 6-6, 6-7. He’s a big kid. Great human being. His parents say the right things. He’s in it for the right reasons.

“I mean, there’s a reason why everybody was on him.”