Competitive Fire Meets Championship Depth: Kentucky's Coaches Rave About Practice Battles
Those of us watching the Kentucky Basketball Pro Day broadcast from home didn’t get to see as much basketball as those at Historic Memorial Coliseum, but we did get interviews with Mark Pope and his coaching staff. There were two common themes throughout: this team is competitive to the point that the coaches are having to dial the players back at times in practice, and they’re so deep that the possibilities are endless.
Let’s start with quotes about competition in practice. Alvin Brooks III, Mark Fox, and Mikhail McLean said practices have gotten so intense that they’re having to step in on occasion to cool down the fires. It all starts on the defensive end.
Competitive Practices
Alvin Brooks III
“We have a lot of guys who are competing to be Defensive Player of the Year. So when you have guys who are competing to be Defensive Player of the Year, then you have to play defense to win that award, so we have a lot of energy when it comes to this group. They compete that way a lot to the point we have to tone our practice plans down so we’re not competing against each other too much.”
“It’s exciting to see them compete every single day. They talk noise to each other and it’s a lot of competitive spirit, but I love that at the end of it, they hug, they laugh, and you would think that they never just competed against each other like they didn’t know each other.”
Mark Fox
“I do think we have extremely competitive guys this year. Some days we even have to maybe turn it down a notch because we’ve got a lot of alpha males who are tenacious, if you will…I do like it when these guys get after it, and this group does. This group can win at both ends, I think. We’ve got to keep getting better, but I’ve been really impressed with their tenacity.
Mikhail McLean
“We almost have to dial these guys down. Everything we do, they want it to be a competition. Sometimes we’re like guys, we need to teach a little bit. They just want to play, they want to foul the living snot out of one other.“
“We always say the practices are going to be so much harder than the actual games. Yesterday was supposed to be a lighter day to keep these guys fresh, and these guys are literally trying to fight one another. Guys are diving on the floor, guys are climbing on each other’s backs for rebounds, blocking shots, talking trash, and we’re like, guys, relax. They cannot wait to play against someone else, man. It makes our jobs [easier]. We never have to dial these guys up.”
Depth
Alvin Brooks III
“From top to bottom, this may be the deepest team I’ve ever been a part of, and that shows the talent that we have, and now they have to show it.”
“There aren’t many times in your career that you have the opportunity to legitimately be a part of a team that can win a national championship. I think that we definitely have the talent. Now we just need to stay healthy, and we have to make sure we love one another to make it happen.”
Top 10
- 1New
5 Stages of UK FB Grief
It's time to mourn the Stoops era
- 2New
Auburn game time
Cats vs. Tigers at night on Nov. 1
- 3Trending
Another Lowe update
MRI came back negative
- 4New
Ochocinco
Chad Johnson criticizes UK's playcalling
- 5Hot
Lowe watched UL lose
Only needed an L's Down
Get the Daily On3 Newsletter in your inbox every morning
By clicking "Subscribe to Newsletter", I agree to On3's Privacy Notice, Terms, and use of my personal information described therein.
Mikhail McLean
“We’re going to come in waves…We legitimately have 13 guys who are good enough to start at a lot of high-major programs. It’s a good problem to have.”
“We are two to three deep at every single position. We have unbelievable leadership at every position, and if you watch us practice and you didn’t know who is who, you would never know which group is the starters or reserves because there’s never one team that wins every day. We could have the same two teams play against each other, and the white team could win three days in a row, and the blue team could win the next seven days. It doesn’t matter who is on each team; that’s how competitive and how much better they’re making each other right now.”
Mark Pope
The White Team last night was Jaland Lowe, Denzel Abderdeen, Malachi Moreno, Mo Dioubate, Trent Noah, and Braydon Hawthorne. The Blue Team was Brandon Garrison, Collin Chandler, Reece Potter, Jasper Johnson, Andrija Jelavic, and Kam Williams. Otega Oweh and Jayden Quaintance did not participate in the 5-on-5 scrimmaging.
Pope said those have been the teams for scrimmages the last five practices, and he’s been experimenting with “stacking” teams in hopes of predicting the outcomes, which is proving difficult because of their depth. Pope said the blue team has dominated the last four days, but the white team got its first win during Pro Day.
“It’s been fun and really challenging. Usually, I can stack a team and know the outcome. And I’ve tried for the last five days, I’ve tried to stack a team and get the predicted outcome in practice, and I can’t. I’ve actually talked to the guys about that, like, we tried to trick it up and stack it, and who’s playing well, and let’s put them all together, and then, for sure, the other team raised up. This is a team of great depth and great competitive spirit. So, it makes this — I can’t wait. Like, it is such a joy to coach this group.”
“I think Jasper [Johnson] was talking Monday in the media about iron sharpening iron, right? That was my experience here. That was my experience in Kentucky in such a huge way. We’ve talked about this for 30 years, our practices were so much harder than games, almost with very few exceptions, and we felt like our second unit — and I say this because I was in the second unit — it felt like our second unit probably could have been a final national championship team.”
Discuss This Article
Comments have moved.
Join the conversation and talk about this article and all things Kentucky Sports in the new KSR Message Board.
KSBoard