What makes this Kentucky team special? Gratitude for an Unexpected Dream

There are a lot of things that make this Kentucky team unique. The most obvious: they’re the first Wildcats to play under Mark Pope; since Adolph Rupp retired, there have only been seven “first teams” in program history, so for that alone, they will be remembered.

The second: unlike the 15 teams coached by Pope’s predecessor John Calipari, they were not all five-star recruits. In fact, just one had a five-star ranking, Amari Williams, and that was only from one service, Rivals. The rest of the players on this year’s roster were four- or three-star prospects, nine transferring to Kentucky from other schools. A handful made multiple stops before reaching Lexington, the final destination for at least seven, who are either graduate students (Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson, Koby Brea, Andrew Carr, and Amari Williams), fifth-year seniors (Kerr Kriisa), or seniors (Ansley Almonor).

The fact that Mark Pope was able to throw together this ragtag group in a matter of months is impressive; the fact that through six games, they’ve been this good, ranked No. 8 in the country, is downright remarkable. Each player is talented and fits well in Mark Pope’s system, but what makes them truly special is that none of them, outside of Travis Perry, expected to be here. Even the select few who once dreamt of playing for Kentucky had moved on, only to be given the opportunity, some as their college careers draw to a close.

Gratitude for living out an unexpected dream has become the tie that binds this team. It’s apparent in almost every media opportunity as players reflect on their growing relationship with the program and its fans. It’s like we’re seeing each of them have their “Kentucky moment,” made possible by Pope, who knows better than anyone the impact those can have on a life — and career.

Because it’s Thanksgiving and we love Kentucky Basketball — and we’re really starting to love this team — let’s look back at some of those comments, starting with Otega Oweh’s after the win over Duke two weeks ago.

“I would just say, wearing Kentucky on your chest, you just have to carry yourself a certain way,” Oweh said. “You know that you’re not just playing for yourself; you’re playing for a whole nation. You’re playing for your brothers. It’s a dream to play for Kentucky and the fact that I’m here and the fact that [Andrew Carr] is here, it just makes everyone want to play harder. I would just say that. Just wearing the Kentucky jersey definitely makes me want to go out there and play.”

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“I couldn’t imagine myself here,” Brandon Garrison also said after the Duke win. “It’s just amazing to be here. You know, it’s a big, big thing on all of our shoulders, all my teammates, and I’ve just got to play for the letters across my chest.”

Ansley Almonor is one of a handful of players on this roster who grew up dreaming of playing for Kentucky but started his career elsewhere. He had two college basketball posters hanging in his room growing up, one of Kentucky and one of Duke. Instead of Lexington or Durham, the sport took him to Hackensack, New Jersey, where he played for Fairleigh Dickinson for three seasons. Now, he’s finally in Lexington.

“I’m just happy to really be here, to be honest,” Almonor told KSR following Kentucky’s blowout win over Jackson State. “I’m not really supposed to be here, really looking at my story. So just me being here, being able to honor this jersey, I just love it. And I’m so appreciative. So that’s why every time I go out there, I’m just happy to be here.”

“Every time I go out there, it’s another reason to be grateful,” Almonor added. “God put me in this position to go out there and put on this prestigious jersey, represent all of these people in the state and all of our supporters around the country. That really means a lot. That’s why I really enjoy it, I’m really appreciative of my opportunity.”

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The same goes for Koby Brea, who grew up idolizing Karl-Anthony Towns, a fellow New Jersey native of Dominican descent. He also followed Kentucky’s other Jersey boys, Isaiah Briscoe and Hamidou Diallo, and the player he models his game after, Devin Booker. After his final season at Dayton, Brea attended a Drake concert at Rupp Arena, where his girlfriend caught him staring at the banners in the rafters.

“Koby was here in Rupp a year ago,” Mark Pope said after last week’s Jackson State win. “He was starring at Dayton as one of the most efficient offensive players in the country, and he came here for a Drake concert. And he came with his [girlfriend] Juliana and Koby walked in the gym, and he was just like, ‘Man, this is Kentucky,’ and Juliana was like, ‘Man, are you more excited about Drake or Rupp?’ He’s like, ‘Well, I’m more excited about Rupp.’ And now he’s wearing this uniform representing you all, and it’s actually beautiful.”

“There’s so many things I could be thankful for,” Brea said on Monday. “Just the opportunity to be here. The University of Kentucky is something I’ve always dreamt of, so the opportunity to be doing this in front of this fanbase, my family has been able to come down a couple of times, so I’m really thankful they’ve been able to do that, thankful for this team. This team has something special. I’ve never been a part of something quite like this. Just a group of guys who are able to be so unselfish. We’re all coming toward the end of our college career and somehow we’re all just giving more to each other. It’s not about us.”

Even Jaxson Robinson, who played for three different programs before Kentucky (Texas A&M, Arkansas, and BYU) is amazed by how the group has come together.

“It’s funny because a couple of us have played each other in the past, even just last year in the Big 12, playing Kerr [Kriisa] and Brandon [Garrison], Otega [Oweh],” Robinson told KSR this week. “It’s just really cool, just looking across the locker room, and he was just the enemy. So, just being grateful. We all weren’t supposed to be here, but somehow, some way, we made our way to Kentucky, and that’s every little kid’s dream. So Coach Pope always preaches gratitude. And I think this, this group is really special when it comes to that.”

Pope doesn’t just preach gratitude, he makes his players practice it. At the end of each day, they gather around and play “gratitude tag,” sharing whatever they’re grateful for in that moment. To Pope, it’s one of those lessons that’s bigger than basketball.

“Gratitude needs to be practiced,” Pope said on his radio show Monday. “I’ll say this, and you’ll hear me say this a million times, but there are very few things that I will say are absolute, 100 percent truths.”

“If you are great at being grateful, by definition, you will 100 percent be happy. Grateful people are happy, right? Ungrateful people have a really tough time being happy. It’s interesting. You see rich people that are happy and rich people that are sad. You see famous people that are happy and famous people that are sad. You see poor people that are sad and poor people that are happy.

“You see people in any type of circumstance — it doesn’t matter the circumstance, it matters the gratitude that you bring with it.”

In this circumstance, it’s 15 guys coming together from all walks of life and basketball, now united by a common goal. That could apply to any basketball team, but there’s something a little different when “Kentucky” is across the chest, something Pope knows all too well.

“This is actually not about me at all,” Pope said after the Duke win, the first signature victory of his Kentucky career. “If it’s about me, it’s too much and it’s too big. It’s about these boys. It’s about BBN. It’s about these guys coming and competing. These guys dreaming of wearing a Kentucky jersey one day, never thinking they would…That’s what makes this special. I just get to observe and watch. And that’s pretty great.”

Yes, it is.