October is here which means Kentucky basketball is here, Big Blue Madness now just nine days away while Pro and Media Days are even closer — five and six away, respectively. Then after SEC Media Day on Oct. 15, we get the Blue-White Preseason Event on Oct. 18, followed by the Wildcats’ first exhibition game exactly three weeks away on Oct. 23.
Live, consumable basketball is just days away with Pro Day being our first chance to see this group with our own two eyes. Until then, we have to rely on others who have seen Mark Pope’s first squad in action behind the scenes at the Joe Craft Center. Yesterday, it was Jon Rothstein, who called Kentucky an NCAA Tournament team after watching practice on Tuesday. Now, we’re digging into Cameron Mills’ comments on Clark’s Pump-N-Shop BBN Radio with the UK Sports Network this week.
He shared his thoughts on Kentucky’s first practice last week. Now, Mills is going a little deeper, talking with Darren Headrick for a couple of radio segments to share the latest on the Wildcats.
‘Mature talent’ with ‘grown men’
Ah, the question all of Big Blue Nation wants to know: Is Kentucky going to be good this year?
You never know until the games tip off and practices can only reveal so much, but Mills did his best to answer that question based on what he knows about this group after a number of viewings.
In short, yes, and it’s because they’ve got some grown man strength from the top of the roster to the bottom.
“Everybody keeps asking me, ‘Are they going to be any good?’ And it’s hard to tell based on what I’m seeing in practice and what they’re going to compete against every game. But there is a ton of mature talent,” Mills said. “It’s opposite of last year and most Cal years where we had a bunch of freshmen. Now we’ve got a bunch of fifth-year seniors that are grown men that can push their way into the low post and get you off of them if they want to out on the perimeter.
“If you’re a freshman, you can be as strong as you want to be, but if you’re trying to get around someone on the perimeter, it’s not just about quickness. It’s about muscle. You have to push around them because you’re going body to body. Lamont Butler? He’s going to get around you because he’s going to push you out of the way.”
Shooting will leave you speechless
We knew about the experience with seven super seniors coming in, just as we all know about the shooting — but seeing is truly believing, Mills said. If there is one clear takeaway with this group, it’s that they can shoot with the best of them while taking them at a historic rate.
And it’s going to help them win ball games this season. Not necessarily all of their games, but plenty of them.
“Number one, it’s the three-point shooting. I just don’t have a word for it. I don’t have a word for it,” he said. “Now, I want to be careful in saying this stuff because I know they’re going to have a bad game shooting, I know we’re going to lose some games this year. I mean, I don’t think we’re going to lose a lot — maybe that’s just my favoritism and bias, I don’t know. But based on the practices I’ve seen — look, we don’t have freshmen, we got old dudes, finally.
“Watching them go through and knowing Mark Pope’s offense is setting records with three-point shots in a game, and then watching the drills they’re doing three-point wise — they’re all at game speed.”
‘Effortless’ with absurd efficiency across the board
More on that — again, because shooting will be the main talking point of this team throughout the season. Mills talked about a segment of practice that involved the Wildcats dividing up to take ten shots at every position with ten different positions — coming off screens, cuts and curls all over the floor — 100 shots per player with two guys at every basket for 200 total shots.
It’s a drill that combines situational basketball and volume at full game speed to simulate the shots they’d get in live action. And the Cats did not miss.
“I’m watching under Ansley (Almonor) and Koby (Brea)‘s goal, watching them shoot,” he said. “I looked at someone watching practice with me and said, ‘Have you seen them miss a shot? I haven’t seen them miss a shot.’ They get done and Mark is asking for numbers. Ansley and Koby’s number was, out of 200 shots, they hit 178. Travis (Perry) and Trent (Noah) made 176. And the four of them, they weren’t even the high shooter among all the players. Out of 100 shots, Jaxson (Robinson) hit 80.”
It’s not just the guards, either. It’s everyone. The way Mills sees it, there isn’t a single person in the rotation who isn’t capable of hitting essentially a third of his attempts from deep this season.
They all just shoot effortless balls, and it’s going to translate to efficiency.
“I’m not sure there’s a guy here that will shoot less than 30 percent from the three-point line — and that includes bigs,” Mills said. “I feel nervous saying that because I don’t want to jinx the team or set them up for failure, but you sit there in practice and it’s effortless. It’s effortless the way they get them off and the wisdom they have to shoot it.”
Amari Williams earns kills while Lamont Butler and Koby Brea stop them
What about the defense?
Toward the end of practice, Pope divides the teams into blue and white — not based on starters and backups, but rather talent and skill sets spread across evenly. It’s a drill designed to rack up kills, which are three defensive stops in a row — “maddening,” as Mills called it.
“It’s one of those drills that will make you angry at your teammates,” he said.
With the white team starting first, it was three-time CAA Defensive Player of the Year Amari Williams setting the tone right away.
“They got kills in their first three possessions, they didn’t have a problem because Amari cleaned up the glass every single time on every single shot that went up,” Mills said. “The blue team would get in the lane and try to shoot layups or jump shots and Amari — he missed a block, they’d get an offensive rebound and then Amari would block that shot. The two other times he just swatted layups away — and not just swat them out of bounds, because that’s what they teach good shot-blockers. … You keep it inbounds to get possession.”
The white team gets their kill and they’re done, switching over to offense while the blue team takes over on defense for their kill.
That didn’t come so easily, though, thanks to two key standouts.
“I want you to imagine this. It’s hard to stop Lamont from getting to the goal, and it’s hard to stop Koby from missing a three,” Mills said. “You’ve got one player that can just break you down — he will body himself into that lane and get a shot off. Then you’ve got Koby, who will dribble and launch a three — fadeaway, it goes in. So imagine the number of times the blue team got two stops, and then Lamont would have a layup or Koby would ruin their day. It was fun because it’s fun to ruin their day, right?”
The blue team finally came together to get their kill and the whole gym erupted, bringing Mills back to his time in Lexington as a player under Rick Pitino. The same battles they went through together as teammates, Pope was now leading them as the head coach of his alma mater.
He’ll be the first to tell you he got a bit emotional seeing it all unfold.
“This is what I remember. This is the kind of pressure and this is the kind of excitement,” Mills said. “This is the kind of team-ship — if that’s even a word — that made us great in the 90s. Mark is bringing that flavor back where it is about team, it is about Kentucky, it is about hanging banners, period.”
