Kentucky plays 'Ball of Duty' on defense as a 'game within the game'

You may have heard about the latest release taking over the video game community, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, released back in October. The Kentucky Wildcats love it, the team playing it in their time away from the court in recent weeks — an overlap with the start of the regular season.

What if I told you, though, the first-person shooter game has carried over to the battles inside Rupp Arena and beyond for the Cats? That’s all thanks to UK associate head coach Alvin Brooks III, the mastermind behind Ball of Duty.

Yes, Ball of Duty.

The concept of racking up kills in a college basketball game is not a new one — three stops in a row gives you a kill, stacking kills gives you a better shot at a win. Not too dissimilar to the video game, right? That’s how the Wildcats hit their magic defensive field goal percentage goal of 39 percent in five straight games to start the year with five consecutive wins.

Koby Brea spilled the beans about Ball of Duty when talking about Kentucky’s defensive progress since arriving on campus back in the summer. The team has gotten better and better on that end of the floor, and the coaches’ spin on the popular video game series is a big part of that.

“Individually, I see everybody getting better,” Brea said Monday. “But even more than, our team is just really connected defensively. The more games we go, the better it gets. We start to see more clips on film of how connected our team is defensively and how many kills we’re getting, three stops in a row. Every game, that’s something we take pride in. It’s something the coaches are doing that’s funny, they call it ‘Ball of Duty.’

“A lot of guys on the team play Call of Duty, so they call it ‘Ball of Duty.’ What team is gonna get the most kills? That’s a game within the game for us.”

The Wildcats show up for battle every game armed with plenty of firepower. When that ball is tipped, the hunt begins. The goal is to win the basketball game overall, obviously, but the game within the game helps decide how the team wins.

You know the points are going to come organically with the pace and shot volume this team brings to the table. When you can maximize possessions, though, with defensive stops? That’s how you really swing the momentum in a hurry.

“It always is (extra motivation),” Andrew Carr added. “The coaching staff does a great job there — it’s a great group of characters put together. Coach Brooks does the defense and gives us a defense every game, then we try to go win the kill battle. The new Call of Duty just came out, so he’s trying to embrace that for us. Win ‘Ball of Duty,’ that’s our goal going into every game.”

So if you hear ‘kill stop’ coming from the Kentucky bench on Tuesday when the Wildcats take on Western Kentucky, now you know why. It’s because this group is trying to win Ball of Duty.

They’ve won five times up to this point. Can they make it six?

“The players and coaches on the bench, they’ll be screaming, ‘Kill stop! Kill stop! This is the stop before the kill!’ That’s something that is really important to us,” Brea said. “… Every game so far, we’ve been winning that battle. I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna change anytime soon.”