Kentucky MBB began summer practice on Monday: "It was definitely a good day one."

Summer practices for the 2025-26 Kentucky men’s basketball team officially got underway Monday. Head coach Mark Pope wasn’t in attendance due to his obligations with Team USA — where he was coaching up freshmen Jasper Johnson and Malachi Moreno, Johnson even making the first roster cut — but he’s on his way back to Lexington as he rejoins the rest of the crew this week.

“Practice was this morning, we had kind of like skill groups. We got up early, got up at it, and it was a good first day, getting everybody acclimated to the system,” Sophomore Trent Noah said following Monday’s practice. “It was definitely a good day one.“

After having to quickly piece together a team in year one, Pope was able to build this season’s roster at his own pace. While most of the team is new, there are still four returning players (not to mention the entire coaching staff coming back) to help ease everyone else into the flow of Pope’s style and system.

This time last year, only Jaxson Robinson knew how to “translate” Pope’s coaching, but even Robinson wasn’t at Kentucky the year before. Going into year two, Pope has several translators.

“I feel like we’re kinda taking the Jaxson Robinson role, because we know Coach Pope and we know what he expects and his standards and his system,” Noah said of the returning players. “Now the (new) guys are coming to us and asking how this goes and stuff like that. It’s kinda big. We kinda have four Jaxs this year. It should make things a lot smoother.”

Along with Noah, the likes of Otega Oweh, Brandon Garrison, and Collin Chandler all returned to Lexington for another season. Chandler is in a bit of unique situation compared to the other three, though. He took two full years off from playing basketball after high school for his mission. The talented 6-foot-5 guard was able to find a groove late in the season, but now he has a much better idea of what to expect from the jump — and that starts with attacking these summer practices.

“I feel like I know my environment a little bit better. I was coming in a little bit blind last year of what to expect,” Chandler said Monday. “I didn’t really know what to expect, how to go about it, whereas I feel like this offseason, I know exactly what I’m supposed to be working on. I know what I can do.

“I have a lot better vision of what I need to do, I think that’s the biggest difference.”

Most of the team has spent the last couple of weeks getting to know each other better after moving into their homes for the next year. Team bonding exercises, mixed in with offseason workouts, have been a regular occurrence. It feels like only yesterday the 2024-25 season came to a close, but the start of 2025-26 has officially begun.

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