Depth is Kentucky's 'superpower' -- and key to No. 9

Mark Pope thought the same thing we all did after Kentucky wiped the floor with No. 1 Purdue after playing ten Wildcats more than 15 minutes with just four playing 20 or more. Depth was the top talking point all offseason, and then we got to see it in action against the best of the best — executed about as well as one could hope for the first exhibition game. Nine players scored with eight converting multiple buckets and seven with at least three, no individual scorer with more than 15 points and three double-figure scorers.

Right when the first group was gassed, the second was ready to take over and keep chipping away. The craziest part? Pope thought his guys could have pushed harder, wanting to improve conditioning so the Wildcats can really crush the will of opponents as the season moves forward.

If done the right way, there are some similarities with his 1995-96 national championship team in Lexington.

“I actually didn’t think we played this hard as consistently as we can,” Pope said. “… I actually felt like we didn’t play as hard as we are going to have to play to win consistently.  I kind of was looking at the bench and was like, ‘I need fresh bodies.’ We will continue to work on our conditioning.  It’s a matter of how hard, how much pressure can we exert on this game every single second of the game. And that will help us defensively. It will help us offensively. Because it breaks open things. Just that fatigue and unrelenting pressure. 

“I was sitting in the office with Lee (Anne) just after I met with the team looking at the box score and I was like, this feels like my ’96 team in terms of point distribution. Can you do that in 25-26? Can we actually pull it off where we have guys that care so much about each other and so much about Kentucky that they are willing to do this? We are going to see. 

“If we can do it, it’s a fun way to play, man, it’s pretty special.”

How do his players feel about it? They’re ready to follow in Pope’s footsteps and accomplish what he was able to as a Wildcat back in the day, playing a similar brand of basketball. They got a taste of it against serious competition on Friday, and now, they crave the full entree.

If they can wear the Boilermakers down, they can wear anyone down.

“I think that’s part of our superpower with this team,” Trent Noah said. “We have so many guys that are so talented and so hungry to get out there, so whenever you play in little spurts and little spans, playing as hard as you can and making the right play and playing for the guy sitting at the scorer’s table ready to sub in is huge.

“Because you know they come in and there’s no dropoff whatsoever, and then they get to play for you. It kind of just rolls like that.”

Ten of 11 players to suit up scored for the Wildcats in the 13-point win, no obvious flaws or weakest links. And that’s not even counting All-SEC pick Jaland Lowe and projected lottery pick Jayden Quaintance making their Kentucky debuts at some point, the former sooner than the latter.

It’s a tough dynamic for Pope figuring out who to play and for how long, but that’s exactly how the players want it. They know that’s what separates them from everybody else in college basketball this season.

“That means we can keep going and going and going and stretching,” Malachi Moreno said of the balance. “There’s nobody that has depth like us, in my opinion. I think we have a second unit that can come in and everybody’s hungry, everybody’s ready to eat. So I think that’s just a recipe for success.”

What happens when Kentucky is back to full strength and that big-picture vision comes together? That’s for the Wildcats to know and the rest of the sport to find out the hard way.

“(It means) that we’re gonna be lethal,” Moreno added. “I think tonight showed that even though we weren’t healthy, we can still come in waves, and we’re missing two really key pieces. I feel like once we get them back, we’ll be unstoppable. …

“We can keep up the same intensity, just keep going and going and going. Just having that kind of experience and having that kind of depth, it really, really builds success for No. 9.”