Collin Chandler explains why playing off two feet is key to developing his game

In high school, Collin Chandler could get by on pure athleticism. He quickly learned that wasn’t going to be the case at Kentucky.

Standing at 6-foot-5 with the ability to jump over his 6-foot-10 head coach, Chandler has typically been the most athletic player in the gym throughout his life. It’s part of what made him a four-star recruit and top 40 talent in the country out of high school. But making the leap to playing in the Southeastern Conference, preceded by a two-year break from basketball for his mission trip, has forced him to reprioritize his skillset.

“It almost seemed like everything was a surprise and challenge,” Chandler said Monday about his freshman season.

Chandler isn’t trying to get back to being the player he was in high school. That’s counterproductive, he believes, to his development. Everything from now on is about moving forward.

“I don’t want to be the same player that I was (in high school) because there’s a lot of things I would need to change if I was coming from high school to playing here,” he added. “There’s a lot of things that I need to change.”

Chandler began to make those changes once he arrived at the University of Kentucky last summer, but it took nearly the entire 2024-25 season as he continued to — in a sense — relearn how to play the game.

By this point, we all know how Chandler’s freshman campaign played out. He struggled early and often, particularly with his on-court confidence. The Utah native was an offseason standout at Big Blue Madness and the Blue-White Preseason Event. But we tend to forget he suffered a minor hamstring injury during the middle of last summer, a setback for someone who needed every single minute of available practice time.

It wasn’t until mid-February rolled around that Chandler finally began to hit a groove. During the last 11 games played (including the postseason) of 2024-25, he was regularly clocking 15 or more minutes per game. As KSR’s Drew Franklin discovered, Chandler scored more points just in the month of March (48 points across eight games) than he did from November through February (34 points across 22 games). He was essentially the team’s sixth man by the NCAA Tournament.

And that’s why expectations going into his second season are so high within the fanbase. Chandler was helping Kentucky win games when it mattered most — what kind of player could he turn into with another full (and hopefully fully healthy) offseason? According to Chandler himself, he has a few areas he’s particularly focused on improving: ball handling, shooting at full speed, and playing off two feet.

The first two are easy to understand on the surface. Chandler was not a fully confident ball handler or shooter until March rolled around. But playing off two feet is a bit more complex. It’s something Mark Pope has harped on with Otega Oweh over the last year — another high-level athlete still trying to sharpen his game without relying on supreme athleticism.

“Playing off two feet was a big thing,” Chandler said when asked what he learned from his rookie campaign. “I’m used to playing off of one foot a lot, off balance, kind of shooting hope shots. But that was a big thing I learned and developed, playing off two feet, making repeatable plays.

“It takes time, and it also takes experience playing off two feet and pivoting.”

Chandler is in the process of hammering home what it means to play off two feet. The most important part? It’s not about making a play every single time, but giving himself a chance to keep a possession alive. He can’t just rise up and dunk over an opposing center or power his way through a defense like he could in high school. His approach has to be more calculated, even if it doesn’t directly result in points.

“When you pick up the ball playing off two feet, and sometimes nobody’s open, and it feels so uncomfortable with the ball, you just want to get rid of it, right?” Chandler explained. “It’s almost like an awkward play, but a winning play is: nobody’s open, okay, I’ll pass it over almost half court to get it to our guy, to set it up again.

“That’s actually a win for our team. We went to try to find a play and nothing worked, so we’re going to live to fight another day and go again, it’s actually a win.”

By playing off one foot, he’s more likely to get stuck in the air with little time to make a split-second decision. Playing off two feet allows Chandler to stay calm and control the outcome of the possession. The better he gets at it, the easier the game will come to him.

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