Collin Chandler will have rust to knock off after his Mormon mission

This morning, Mark Pope landed his first commitment at Kentucky in Collin Chandler, a former BYU signee and four-star recruit in the 2022 class. Chandler was considered the No. 6 combo guard and the No. 34 overall player in the On3 2022 rankings and was named the 2022 Utah Gatorade Player of the Year. Because he’s been on a mission for the past two years, he’ll have some rust to knock off once he arrives in Lexington.

A month after Chandler signed with BYU in March 2022, he received his mission call from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints telling him he would serve in Sierra Leone for the next two years. He streamed the moment on Instagram Live with almost 700 people watching:

#BYU’s Collin Chandler received his mission call.

He will be serving in West Africa and reporting to the MTC on July 25.#BYUHoops @kslsports pic.twitter.com/cdtW8I6ss4

— Mitch Harper (@Mitch_Harper) April 13, 2022

Chandler was reassigned to London for part of his mission and is scheduled to return home on May 2. What kind of shape will he be in? Missionaries don’t exactly have the time or facilities to stay in tip-top basketball shape; in fact, rules discourage competitive, full-court basketball. Guidelines are different for each mission, but elders are discouraged from exercising at public or commercial gyms for safety reasons. They’re given an hour a day to exercise. At the most, they can play some pick-up now and then with other elders on their mission, and that’s only if there’s a hoop nearby.

In 2013, this video of Mormon missionaries playing pickup with locals went viral (fair warning, it includes some cursing). Maybe a similar scenario took place on a court in Sierra Leone?

That leaves the bulk of conditioning for the weeks and months after missionaries return. BYU had a standard strength and conditioning program for missionaries upon their return that lasted six to eight weeks. Here’s how BYU guard Dallin Hall, who entered the transfer portal after Mark Pope took the job at Kentucky but is not considering the Cats, described how he tried to stay in shape while on his mission and his transition back to basketball.

“I usually got to play every other day for 30 minutes in the morning with some missionaries. On (preparation) days, we’d play for a while,” Hall told Deseret News. “Missionary basketball is a different brand of basketball. But it helped me keep my shot locked in. Now I’m just trying to get my legs back.”

“You run two plays up and down and you’re exhausted,” he said of conditioning once home. “My body’s getting really close to being back. Now, it’s definitely the mental side. Just getting back in the flow of things, playing free, playing like myself, with confidence. That’s definitely the challenge ahead for me.”

Chandler will have to hit the ground running when he arrives in Lexington. Literally.