Kentucky has worked on nothing but ball screen defense since Ohio State

There is only one on-court New Year’s resolution that matters for the Kentucky Wildcats — and they’re not waiting until 2025 to get it figured out. Combining media appearances from Mark Pope, Jaxson Robinson and Lamont Butler on Monday leading up to the team’s New Year’s Eve matchup vs. Brown, the phrase ‘ball screen defense’ was uttered over a dozen times by the trio.

What has the team been working on since returning to campus after the Christmas holiday on December 26? You guessed it.

“Ball screen defense was a massive priority, and it’s going to continue to be,” Pope said during his call-in radio show. “It’ll be a work in progress every day from now through the rest of the season.”

“Ball screen defense, that’s what we’ve been hammering ever since we got back to campus. We’ve just been hammering ball screen defense and trying to get better at it,” Robinson added during player availability earlier in the day. “Coach Pope thinks we can be one of the better ball screen defensive teams in the country, but there’s a lot of progress to be made. I think we took some steps forward over the break.”

“We got back on the 26th and, ever since, all of our practices have been very intense. One of the key focuses has been ball screen defense. We’ve been hammering that in almost every day,” Butler confirmed once again. “I feel like the effort and energy that we’ve put into that has been great. We got a lot better this week going into this next game. We’re going to try to continue to get better.”

How has the team responded after taking a 20-point loss against Ohio State? By fixing ball screen defense. What can you learn about yourselves during a 10-day break between games? That ball screen defense can be fixed.

“Ball screen defense. That’s all we’ve been doing,” Robinson said. “… I mean, obviously we do other stuff — shell defense, putting up shots, all that good stuff. But the main emphasis has been ball screen defense and just trying to get better. We know it’s an area where we definitely need to improve come SEC play. … (It’s) definitely No. 1.”

The biggest takeaway from the loss? Ball screen defense needs to get fixed.

“Getting back into the lab gave us some time to work on what we need to work on. Ball screen defense has been our biggest takeaway from last game, especially defensively,” Butler continued. “I think we took huge steps in the last couple of days.”

Final non-conference game coming up against Brown, what does Robinson hope to show ahead of SEC play?

“Improvement in ball screen defense.”

Do you see a theme yet? I hope so — because I’m not sure how many more times I can write ball screen defense before my laptop explodes.

We get the picture, but what led to this point? Why did it become priority No. 1 for the program, stressed ad nauseam coming back from break? Associate head coach Alvin Brooks III did the math, and it wasn’t pretty.

“I think AB said in our Power 5 games, we’ve had like 100 points scored on us in ball screens,” Robinson said. “Just trying to find ways to get better, and that’s a way teams have been really effective in scoring on us. We’re a great 3-point defensive team, so we’re just trying to shrink the floor and make it a 5-on-5 game and not 2-on-2.”

The Ohio State tape was glaring — to be expected in a 20-point loss. Butler noticed ‘we just weren’t us’ in real time and ‘it just kind of felt weird when we were out there playing, we weren’t doing the things that we’ve been doing all year.’ The Wildcats didn’t play off two feet, weren’t making plays for each other — and, of course, ball screen defense.

“It was just a bad game for us, we’re gonna put that behind us and try to get better,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is they rejected a lot of our ball screens. I would say (Bruce) Thornton and (Juni) Mobley, they were the main ones that were getting downhill off rejecting — they got some and-ones, some easy lay-ups, some dump offs from that. That was a big thing.”

How does it all get fixed, as the players and coaches have made clear leading up to the Brown matchup? There has been serious growth, the Wildcats pinpointing where they’ve been messing up and creating solutions.

They’re excited to show those solutions off on New Year’s Eve to wrap up the non-conference schedule.

“Just having our bigs at the point of the screen, I think that sometimes starts to kind of deter the downhill from the guard. So we just kind of looked at all of those things and we’re trying to get better at it,” Butler said. “… We gotta listen to the calls from our bigs and be ready to adjust our feet, make sure the guard comes off the screen and get into their body. We gotta keep hammering that in, try to do that at a high rate.”

“There is a lot of stuff — communication, the big being at the point of screen, getting into the ball-handlers body, forcing them into the screen, sprinting back to recover in front of the ball, the list goes on and on,” Robinson continued. “We’ve been hammering it over the last three or four days. I’ve got the confidence, everybody’s got the confidence that we’ll improve this next game.”

Point being, there is no reason to ask about the team’s on-court New Year’s resolutions going into 2025. The staff decided that for them already.

“Yeah, probably,” Robinson said of ball screen defense being the Wildcats’ resolution. “Definitely Coach Pope’s, for sure.”