Kentucky coach Mark Pope on how team can find the joys in basketball
Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope discusses how players should care about something more than themselves to find the joys in basketball with their team.
Kentucky must avoid the significant injuries that plagued its roster last season.The Wildcats need to identify a reliable backup point guard for starter Jaland Lowe.UK has to determine its starting center from a group of inconsistent or inexperienced players.
LEXINGTON — Kentucky basketball’s 2024-25 season ended in the Sweet 16. The Wildcats want to advance at least two rounds further this season — if not four, capped by a victory in the national championship game.
Mark Pope, in his first season as coach, usually concocted a winning formula and pushed the right buttons, going 24-12 overall, tying a single-season Division I record with eight wins over top-15 Associated Press foes, beating rivals Duke and Louisville and sweeping the regular-season series with Tennessee.
But UK fans hope that was just the beginning. If their dreams are realized, the Wildcats will be back in the Final Four for the first time since 2015.
The journey begins Nov. 4, when UK welcomes Nicholls to Rupp Arena.
To guarantee the upcoming season is better than the one that concluded in March, here are three keys for the 2025-26 Kentucky basketball team with the opener barely a month away:
These keys aren’t ranked in order of importance. But if they were, this one would earn pole position. That’s because injuries decimated UK last season. Of its 36 games in 2024-25, it had its full complement of scholarship players available for only seven games. Guard Kerr Kriisa topped that list, missing 27 contests with a foot injury and not playing again after the team’s overtime win against Gonzaga in December. Fellow guard Jaxson Robinson sat out 12 games and saw his season meet a premature end March 1 because of a wrist injury. Lamont Butler only was sidelined nine games because of a shoulder injury — though he played through pain until the season concluded. Andrew Carr was unavailable for just one matchup — a 74-69 road loss at Vanderbilt in January — but the back injury that finally forced him out of that loss had lingered well before he stayed on the bench against the Commodores. And the ailment stuck around after he returned; watching Carr in November versus March showed he simply wasn’t the same player. Aside from Kriisa, every member of that aforementioned group was a starter. Those players constantly shuffling in and out of the lineup because of physical limitations meant UK was regularly adjusting on the fly. And, as the season wound down, depth wasn’t there. The Wildcats’ roster will be deeper, top to bottom, in 2025-26 merely due to the NCAA increasing the scholarship limit in men’s hoops from 13 to 15. Still, the players at the end of Kentucky’s bench won’t be the ones determining how long it stays alive in the NCAA Tournament. It’ll be the players who take up the starter minutes left by Butler, Carr and Robinson. If those members of the lineup don’t stay healthy? UK likely won’t be able to remain part of the March Madness field any longer than last season’s team.
UK’s roster has plenty of options at nearly every position. The lone exception: point guard. Jaland Lowe is the only true point guard on the roster. Despite the lack of a clear backup for the role, Pope pointed — pardon the pun — to four other players who could take over ball-handling duties when Lowe is off the floor: Denzel Aberdeen, Collin Chandler, Jasper Johnson and Otega Oweh. Giving each member of the quartet closer inspection, none stands heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of point guard chops. Aberdeen has averaged one assist per game for his college career, with a career high of five … in December 2023. Versus overmatched Grambling State. Still, his assist rate likely would have been better at Florida had he not been playing off the ball; he will have more opportunities to set up the offense at UK. Offense rarely was in short supply for Oweh, Kentucky’s leading scorer last season. But he’s said one of his objectives for the 2025-26 campaign is proving he also can be a gifted distributor. Johnson is one of the most highly regarded freshmen in the country. But he’s known more for piling up points than racking up assists. And, he’s a freshman. In the no-holds-barred SEC, asking a freshman to take on that much responsibility is a lot — even for a player as talented as Johnson. And then there’s Chandler, who improved in leaps and bounds over the course of last season after returning from a two-year Mormon mission. Yet the reality is he finished the 2024-25 campaign with more turnovers (26) than assists (21). So, Pope’s hope in the rest of his guards aside, the Wildcats are conspicuously lacking a proven backup point guard. They should hope Lowe can stay on the court as much as possible — and avoid the injuries that afflicted UK’s top two point guards (Butler and Kriisa) last season.
Let’s get this part out of the way first: When referring to “sorting out Kentucky’s frontcourt,” what we really mean is the center spot. That’s because Mouhamed Dioubate is a near lock to start at the 4. But he also could step in at center in small-ball lineups. Even as physical as the 220-pound Dioubate is, he’s only 6-foot-7. Playing him at center for long stretches isn’t in his best interests. That’s why the Wildcats’ primary candidates to start at center must step up. It’s a group that consists of Brandon Garrison, Jayden Quaintance, Malachi Moreno and Reece Potter. At least at the outset of the season, Garrison is the odds-on favorite. He’s the only returning player of that group. And the one with the most college experience. (He’s a junior.) The problem is he was maddeningly inconsistent as Amari Williams’ backup last season. He will need to be far better to remain in the lineup this season. That’s because of the addition of Quaintance. The youngest player in the sport during the 2024-25 campaign, he had a stellar season at Arizona State. But he tore his ACL in February. His exact return is uncertain. If he’s anything close to the player he was for the Sun Devils, he’ll lift the Wildcats’ ceiling immensely, as he’s considered the team’s best NBA draft prospect. Moreno has long-term upside, but he’s just a freshman. The SEC learning curve will be steep, so counting on him becoming a primary member of the rotation this season isn’t logical. As for Potter? He’s got shooting touch for days. Yet the unspoken expectation from the moment he signed out of the transfer portal is that he’ll redshirt, using this season to hit the weight room and gain more experience against high-level competition in practice after spending the past two years at Miami (Ohio). In an ideal world, Garrison begins the season as the starting center before giving way to Quaintance as the Wildcats gear up for what they hope is a deep run in the Big Dance.
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
