Kentucky opens practice with all 12 signees: "This team has way more potential than maybe people think"

Mark Pope’s debut season as the head coach at Kentucky is (very) unofficially underway, Monday marking the Wildcats’ first practice of the summer. With the entire 12-man roster moved in — Drexel transfer Amari Williams moved in Saturday to round out the group — the NCAA allows four hours of practice per week for eight weeks through August ahead of the fall semester and into preseason action.

It’s early, but we can now put the offseason behind us with the grind of staff- and roster-building in the rearview mirror. The focus turns to what this team is and can become with tangible on-court results on the horizon.

Pope’s priority going into his first official practice in Lexington? Data collection.

They’ve hand-picked this entire roster from top to bottom with a vision of their individual talents meshing together as a cohesive unit. Now it’s time to see that hope become a reality.

“I’m really excited,” Pope told KSR on Saturday. “We have dug really, really deep into everything we can know about our team and about our guys, about putting this together. We need more data, right? And we need more time. It’s time and data.”

On the surface, Pope loves the collection of pieces he and his staff put together, securing a little bit of everything out of the portal and in the high school ranks. He actually thinks the group isn’t getting as much love as it probably deserves, or at least the upside is higher than most expect. The process of inching closer toward that ceiling, though, starts today when practice tips off inside the Joe Craft Center in Lexington.

“You guys are going to get tired of me talking about connective tissue, but to build the connective tissue and the special sauce of what makes teams great,” the Kentucky head coach added. “I’m just grateful that we’re here right now and we can start doing that in massive earnest. I think this team has way more potential than maybe people think.

“The question is, how good can we be at tapping into it and helping all the pieces fit together with a synergy that makes our whole way bigger than the sum of our parts?”

To do that, Pope told the crowd at Club Blue‘s NEW ERA event at Alltech Arena his team needed to “learn how to play together,” starting with plenty of three-on-three, four-on-four and five-on-five early. With an offense and system built on a foundation of playing off one another, chemistry is really the only way to make this all work.

Oh, and they’ve got to get their conditioning right. One way or another, the Kentucky head coach is going to make sure that’s taken care of in a hurry.

“We’re so excited about (our first practice), the guys are so excited about that. They may be a little nervous about whether they’re in good enough shape right now, but we’ll change that really fast [laughs],” Pope said. “… This roster I think is one of the most special rosters in the entire country.”

It all starts when the balls roll out for the first time at the Joe Craft Center on Monday.