Ansley Almonor (UK Athletics Photo)
As Kentucky prepares for Pro Day on Monday, there are a lot of numbers already to like for coach Mark Pope’s first UK team — and quite different from numbers previous coach John Calipari ever had on his roster.
No longer will Kentucky be the “youngest team” in the country as Calipari liked to say over and over.
Just consider games played and games started for these four transfer players:
— Lamont Butler (San Diego State): 131 games, 102 starts.
— Andrew Carr (Wake Forest): 117 games, 112 starts.
— Amari Williams (Drexel): 105 games, 79 starts.
— Otega Oweh (Oklahoma): 60 games, 37 starts.
Six of Pope’s new Cats are fifth-year seniors — Butler, Williams, Kerr Krissa, Carr, Koby Brea and Ansley Almonor.
What about 3-point shooting? Krissa has 238 career 3’s (36.8 percent), Brea has 224 (43.4), Almonor 166 (37.4), Butler 101 (32.1) and Carr 94 (34.4).
Kentucky has players who have started a combined 586 collegiate games. That’s a huge change for Kentucky because Calipari’s first six UK teams had only 579 career starts going into their seasons. The most career starts going into a season any Calipari team had was 367 on the 2021-22 roster.
So it is a far different type of numbers for UK going into this season.
3 Responses
Don’t want to overlooked the football team, but I’m looking forward to the midnight madness and the season to get started. There’s a lot of excitement that’s hasn’t been felt since when Cal first took over15 years ago. Pope is bringing back the culture what Kentucky basketball is all about. Go cats!
I’m super excited about basketball season and football season at the same time. This is my favorite time of the year. Maybe its the reason that the autumn is my favorite time of year. With so many teams losing yesterday like Alabama and Tennessee that Tennessee game means alot more. If we can beat Vanderbilt which seems much more hard now but we play them at home we will be 2-2 in the SEC and I think after next weeks schedule there will be slot of 2 loss teams. Now Texas needs to lose. I think whoever goes to the SEC championship they will have 2 losses. So as long as we can go 9-3 the playoffs still look manageable. If we could somehow win out we will probably be in the SEC Championship so there is still spot to play for. We can beat anyone on our schedule. We could also lose to anyone in the SEC. The Louisville game looks alot easier now. Texas and Tennessee are the 2 hardest games left on our schedule. If we could split them games watch out.
Middle of the season so alot can happen yet! Fingers crossed for little to no injuries!