From winner's boards to dining room chairs, nothing is safe from this Kentucky team's fire

The two main messages from Kentucky’s preseason so far have been that this team is 1) deep and 2) fiercely competitive, not necessarily in that order. We got two more examples of the latter at SEC Media Day.

During a segment on SEC Now, Mark Pope revealed that the team has a “winner’s board” that the staff updates daily to reflect who performed best in practice. When the team got a look at the fresh winner’s board earlier this week, chaos ensued.

“A couple of days ago, we finished a film session, and we put the winner’s board up — we update it after every practice — we put the winner’s board up, and we couldn’t even get out to the practice court. These guys were arguing; they were crushing our guys recording the wins. They’re fighting about who’s on top of the winner’s board in the film room.”

There are other examples. When Braydon Hawthorne knocked the ball away from Mo Dioubate in practice, Dioubate went after it so hard that he accidentally hit Hawthorne in the mouth and knocked a tooth out of place, sending him to the hospital. When Pope gave the team a week off after summer practice, several stayed on campus and practically lived in the gym, including Denzel Aberdeen, whom Pope regularly mentions as one of the most competitive guys on the team. Pope raved about the Florida transfer again on Tuesday.

“Denzel Aberdeen, everybody at Florida knows this, too, is beautiful, just a pure competitive spirit, which kind of our whole team feels like they’re embodying right now. This love of competition, a fearlessness about the way he competes, that he’s willing to step on the floor, and he’s not scared of taking an L, but he is going to fight you to the death to win everything. If we put him out there and play Tiddlywinks or do a game of Uno, I think our guys would lose their minds.”

In fact, the guys did lose their minds over Bank, a dice game, at Pope’s house, resulting in a broken dining room chair courtesy of assistant coach Mikhail McLean.

“We had a bunch of guys over to the house, playing Bank, a nonsensical dice game, where you decide when you’re going to save your numbers. It got so competitive that one of my assistant coaches broke my dining room chair. I still haven’t forgiven him for that. Mikhail McLean. I’m coming for you.”

I think Lee Anne is the Pope that Coach McLean probably needs to worry about the most regarding the chair, but it’s further proof that this team is relentlessly competitive, which will serve them well this season.

“It’s just the competitive juice that these guys bring every day,” Pope said. “They’re about winning, and it’s what drives them. It’s what wakes them up in the morning. So, when you get to coach a group of guys like that, it’s pretty incredible.”

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