How 'Godfidence' helped Kentucky pull off 'pretty special' win at Tennessee

What if I told you it was the pregame prayer that set the tone for Kentucky to head into Thompson-Boling Arena and leave with a top-10 win? Sure, it took a solid game plan and some good days of practice, a productive shootaround and loose warmups to get there, as well, but there was a specific moment that stood out before tip-off.

As the Wildcats gathered for their prayer, associate head coach Alvin Brooks III — the Great White Shark himself and the leader of Code Gold and Ball of Duty — gave his next lingering one-liner.

“We obviously have a team prayer before we come out to play,” Mark Pope said following the 78-73 win. “Coach Brooks – Alvin Brooks (III) – gave the prayer. He talked about — in his prayer, he prayed that we could have confidence, but even more importantly, that we could have ‘Godfidence.’ I had never heard ‘Godfidence’ before. But I love it.”

Godfidence, eh? It stuck with the Cats as they took the floor, leaning into their faith as a group to pull off what Pope feels is one of the team’s best wins of the season. The ball bounced their way on one end while the misses piled up on the other for the Volunteers, Kentucky making one more 3-pointer than Tennessee on 21 fewer attempts from deep.

Putting together that kind of performance against the No. 1 defense in the country? It takes some Godfidence.

“There’s a little bit of this team, for me – and we’re a pretty faithful team – there’s a little bit of us, we’re kind of, in some ways, performing for an audience of one the best we can,” Pope continued. “And we’re trying to take all the other noise and just kind of set it aside a little bit. When you see a game like this where, for us, ‘Godfidence’ was a real factor in this, it ranks pretty high. It’s pretty special.

“I told the guys before the game, there’s no place I would’ve rather been tonight. It was easy to double down on that after the game. We’re really blessed.”

This team has had faith and unwavering belief in one another from day one, cutting out the outside noise on their path to banner No. 9. It’s not a perfect path and there have been speed bumps with more almost certain to come in this juggernaut of a league, but the long-term vision has been consistent.

Godfidence has allowed them to keep pushing forward, just as it did in Knoxville on Tuesday.

“This is a team that we believed. From the outset, from the first few months, we believed that we would have resilience. That’s what we thought,” Pope said. “We were like, we will have resilience because these guys are loving each other enough. We’re a really good team.

“It’s also challenging, but we feel we can withstand punches and rough stretches. We can get better from them. We were really fortunate tonight and really blessed, it was a really good night for us.”

It was a good night for us, too, Coach.