Pope's First Kentucky Team is Loaded with Shooters
As Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope was assembling his first UK roster, he absolutely put an emphasis on having plenty of shooters. Pope’s offense employs a lot of three-point shooting, and the UK head man went out to find the best shooters he could.
From the reviews of fall practice thus far, Pope was successful in finding players who can put the ball in the basket at a high clip. It starts with the player who led the nation in three-point shooting percentage last season, Koby Brea.
Brea, a transfer from Dayton, was one of the hottest names in the transfer portal during the offseason and he chose to come to Kentucky. He knows that he has the recognition of being a great shooter, but he also wants to be able to help his teammates in that area.
“It’s great to have the recognition and the reputation but we have a lot of great shooters. And for me, I needed them. I needed people around me to keep motivating me to keep getting better and reach new heights,” Brea said. “For them, I feel like I’m a tool for them, I’m somebody that can help them. I’ve put in a lot of work through the years on shooting and I feel like I have a lot of tricks I can use myself and also apply to others. Anybody who has come up to me asking me questions or wanting to shoot with me, I’m open to it.”
When asked who the best shooter on the team was, other than himself, Brea pointed out a veteran and a couple of youngsters who are already making an impact.
“That’s a tough question because if you look through our roster, there are so many guys who can really, really shoot it,” Brea said. “I would say Jaxson (Robinson), he’s more of a proven shooter with his experience in college. But then there’s guys like Travis (Perry) and Trent (Noah) that, every day they come to practice and they light it up. There’s a lot of guys for sure.”
Robinson expanded Brea’s list, adding some different names to his list of the best shooters on the team.
“We’ve got a couple of them,” Robinson said. “Travis, Koby, Kerr (Kriisa), Ansley (Almonor), Trent, they can all shoot it.”
Robinson has seen how the team feeds off one another in practice and that hot shooting can be contagious.
“There’s times during the scrimmages that I feel like we just don’t miss,” Robinson said. “It’s really elite basketball.”
Forward Andrew Carr, who transferred to UK from Wake Forest, believes that the confidence given to the players by the coaches is huge.
“We’re a team that shoots a lot of threes and he (Pope) just instills so much confidence in us,” Carr said. “We’re not turning down any shots and the only way we feel comfortable and confident in doing that is if you have the full support of the staff and they’ve done a really good job of pumping as much confidence into us as possible.”
Carr also likes Pope’s offensive philosophy.
“I’m super excited about that,” Carr said. “He never really says anything about a bad shot or you can’t take that shot, it’s more than you have to take that shot for this team or you’re going to be benched for not taking that shot. We work so hard in the offense to create an open look and if we work hard to create something, then it’s your job, whether you make it or miss it, to take it every single time.”
The 2024-25 Kentucky basketball team has plenty of shooters. Seeing the Cats take threes in bunches this season should be exciting for the Big Blue Nation.
