Lamont Butler on BBN: 'I understand how special this team is for them'

Lamont Butler is one of the dozen new faces that will suit up next season for Kentucky. Still, it hasn’t taken him long to realize how their fanbase already feels about each of them.

Butler spoke about the early love that these new Wildcats have gotten from Big Blue Nation at the NEW ERA Event from Club Blue on Saturday. He said that they’ve already made their impact on them and shown how much they care about this first team of the new era under Mark Pope.

“Oh, it’s amazing. It’s amazing,” said Butler. “Everyone is so nice and, you know, loving and caring.”

“BBN? Everyone loves BBN,” Butler said. “I understand how special this team is for them.”

Kentucky appears to have fully bought in on this upcoming tenure under Pope. It took them a minute to fully warm up to the coaching change but, after a few days, buy-in from the fanbase has been in full force ever since. That’s been evidenced by their commitments in NIL as well as their approval of each and every move since then this offseason.

This is also just a reviving of the program after the past few seasons. The Wildcats appreciated all that took place over their decade and a half under John Calipari. Still, this shift for the Wildcats has been a welcome, and arguably much-needed, change of pace for everybody involved.

That includes for Butler who, after four years at San Diego State, is part of this next roster for Kentucky. All that’s left now is for him to take the court and compete for them in his fifth collegiate season.

“I just can’t wait to go out there and play for them,” Butler said.

Pope on Kentucky’s current roster: ‘We need more data’

Monday was the unofficially official start to the new era of Kentucky Basketball under Mark Pope. The Wildcats took the practice floor for the first time as a team and will now begin the process of intertwining with each another with a dozen new players and an all-new coaching staff.

Ahead of the NEW ERA Event by the Club Blue Collective, Pope discussed the start of summer workouts for Kentucky. For him, this time will be all about gathering every last bit of information that they can about their team. It’ll be about studying how they all fit together as a unit and as they play more with one another.

“We have dug really, really deep into everything that we can know about our team, about our guys, and about putting this together. We need more data, right, and we need more time,” explained Pope. “It’s like time and data to – you guys will get tired of me talking about connective tissue – build the connective tissue and the special sauce of what makes teams great.”

UK has as much to figure out as any team in the country considering how much is different in Lexington. However, once the Wildcats get done with that, Pope believes they can be very good.

“I’m just grateful that we’re here right now and that we can start doing that in massive earnest,” said Pope. “I think this team has way more potential than many people think.”

“The question is how good can we be at tapping into it and helping all the pieces fit together with a synergy that makes our whole way bigger than the sum of our parts?”