Jaxson Robinson credits assistant Cody Fueger with developing him into Big 12 6th Man of the Year

Mark Pope was the man who believed in Jaxson Robinson and gave him his first real chance to shine at the college level, but Robinson likely doesn’t hit the highs he had last season without the man who followed Pope from Provo to Lexington.

Assistant coach Cody Fueger has been on Pope’s coaching staff in some capacity for the last nine years. He’s essentially Pope’s right hand man at this point in their basketball lives. Fueger played a critical role in the successes of Utah Valley State and BYU while working under Pope, and he’s expected to do the same at Kentucky. He’s labeled as a brilliant offensive mind and future head coach. His fingerprints are all over Pope’s system.

The work he’s done with Robinson over the past year is just one example of the impact he can make.

“Huge. He was huge,” Robinson said at SEC Media Days of Fueger’s impact on his development. “My first year, I didn’t really have a close relationship with Fueger, but that second year, this last year — I mean, obviously I made huge strides, and I can’t thank anybody but Cody Fueger for that.

“We spent a whole bunch of time in his office, watching film, and just preparing myself for games and knowing what’s to come. I can’t be more than thankful for Coach Fueger and all that he’s done for me.”

Robinson and Fueger’s evolving relationship before and during the 2023-24 season showed on the floor. Robinson went from an average starter in year one with BYU as a junior to being the Big 12’s Sixth Man of the Year in year two as a senior. He turned into a scoring sparkplug off the pine with averages of 14.2 points per outing while shooting 35.4 percent from deep.

Now with both of them at Kentucky, Robinson is likely to jump back into the starting lineup. He has NBA goals and was viewed as the must-have addition to Pope’s debut roster at Kentucky. He was brought here to go get as many buckets as he possibly can. Will we see another leap from Robinson after even more time learning from Fueger? That’s the plan.

On a macro level, Robinson says the overall offensive philosophy that Pope and Fueger brought over from BYU is making leaps of its own. Pair that (along with better talent) next to another brilliant offensive mind in assistant coach Jason Hart, who Robinson says “knows every basketball play there is”, and you’ve hopefully picked out a recipe for success.

“There’s a couple of wrinkles that we made offensively,” Robinson said. “I think just because of the growth that we made in terms of who we brought to this team, we have other guys that we didn’t have at BYU that could do different stuff.

“So like Andrew Carr, for example, I mean his mid-post game, it’s crazy to watch. So just like small stuff, just trying to get him open in the post and finding ways for Amari (Williams) to be effective on the block. It’s been really good and cool to see, just like the transition that we made from BYU to here.”

We were treated to a small taste of what Robinson is talking about with the 2024-25 Wildcats from Friday’s Blue-White Preseason Event. We’ll get a much bigger bite on Wednesday with the first real exhibition matchup against Kentucky Weslyean.

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