Ansley Almonor named early 'hit champion' -- Kentucky's rebound-tracking competition

Kentucky has been a top-20 rebounding team overall with a top-10 effort on the defensive glass for most of the year, but questions about the Wildcats’ physicality and toughness remained. Those whispers grew louder leading up to the trip to Starkville following a run of four straight games losing head-to-head battles for boards — two coming in losses.

They used it as motivation at Mississippi State and turned it into a gutsy ranked victory for the team’s first true road win, conveniently coming against elite SEC competition. The follow-up? More of the same, this time by double figures at home against a group ranked a few spots higher. 41-33 rebounding advantage in Starkville, 40-30 win back inside Rupp Arena — including a 12-11 win on the offensive glass against the top-ranked team in college basketball in that category.

“We’ve been hearing the ‘soft’ word being thrown around with this Kentucky jersey and we take that personally,” Jaxson Robinson said. “We don’t think people are saying that anymore with what we’ve shown in the last two games.”

It’s not just about the counting stats, though. They’ve won the rebounding battles they had previously lost, but it’s the effort and intensity, the Wildcats being the hammer instead of the nail. It was priority No. 1 on the scouting report the past two games and they came out and executed with purpose. They didn’t just want to come down with the boards, they wanted to jump higher and tougher and rip your spirit away when the ball came off the rim.

And we have The Matt Santoro Project to thank for that.

You see, Santoro is the team’s assistant video coordinator — Mark Pope simply calls him the ‘video coach’ — and came up with something called a ‘hit champion’ for each game. It starts in practice with each successful box-out throwing a body on someone being charted over the course of the day.

It’s not necessarily about pulling down every rebound, but rather putting yourself in position to grab every rebound.

“You know, growing is super complicated. Right? We’ve put a huge emphasis on it. It is The Matt Santoro Project,” Pope said. “Matt has a staff; we usually have 12 segments in practice, seven of them will be live. So, Matt live stats with his team and every single rebound that goes up and who is getting a hit. Not just getting a rebound, but actually doing their job of blocking out and getting a hit. Then he makes an announcement either on the loudspeaker — here at Rupp, he will be on the jumbotron. When we practice, here it is quite entertaining. In the JCC, he has a megaphone. I don’t know where he got this thing, but credit to him, he got a megaphone. He makes the announcement after every single segment.”

From there, a winner is picked based on total hits, leading to a professionally designed certificates for practices and games declaring an official ‘hit champion.’

Whatever works, right?

“We believe what you focus on broadens. Our staff has done an unbelievable job about at the beginning cherry picking unbelievable efforts so our guys could see what it looks like to be successful. And now it’s getting easy, now the guys are having fun with it,” Pope said. “Matt Santoro is handing out a formal certificate.  Our genius graphic designer, Addie Feldhaus, is making these incredible certificates. After every game, the ‘hit champion.’ On Thursday we will present the hit champion of this game with an official certificate.”

The early standout claiming both titles since starting the competition? None other than Ansley Almonor, who has shined off the bench for the Wildcats in a major way to open SEC play.

“Ansley Almonor is two for two. We will see if he goes three straight games,” Pope continued. “But I do — I think what you focus on broadens and our staff and our players are doing a great job with it, it’s pretty fun. It’s really fun when you see these results.”

He helped win the game for the Cats in Starkville with three clutch 3-pointers in a row in the second half, but Almonor’s impact has been felt beyond the box score both in games and behind the scenes in practice.

And Pope sure is glad to have him.

“He’s now our No. 1 hit guy, he’s the Kentucky hit man, back to back!” he said. “I’m really proud of him, he’s bringing so much to our team. He’s doing an unbelievable job, he had another huge contribution (vs. Texas A&M). He’s — with Andrew (Carr) struggling with his back, he’s had to step up and he’s done a great job.”