Lamont Butler feels Kentucky is 'a little underrated,' has pieces to win a championship

If you look across the landscape of college basketball and within the SEC, Kentucky continues to be in the conversation under Mark Pope, but rarely at the top of the conversation. The Wildcats enter the regular season ranked No. 23 in both national polls while being picked to finish eighth in the conference — a good, but not great team.

Kentucky has plenty of pieces and experience, but does it have enough pure talent to make a serious run in 2024-25? That’s the main question. The Cats have steamrolled through the exhibition schedule, but how much more do we know about this team now than before? We really won’t until the competition ramps up during the regular season.

If you ask the team, though, that part doesn’t matter. This group feels the pieces are there to turn heads this season and the preseason rankings aren’t necessarily doing them justice.

“I feel like we’re a little underrated,” Lamont Butler told KSR. “We have a lot of good players, but a lot of us come from — we have some mid-major guys, some guys who haven’t maybe been on the top radar. I think what’s going to surprise people is our connectivity and the pace that we play.

“Coach Pope’s offense is amazing and I think that defensively, we’re underrated, too. We have a lot of great defensive players and a lot of length, so I think it’s going to be tougher for people to beat us. We just have to go out there and show them, that’s all it is.”

The offense is a given — Pope’s system has been compared to a video game, one that prioritizes shot volume and efficiency from the perimeter. To play here, you’ve got to be able to take ’em and make ’em. What about the defense, though? Butler says they’ll be just fine there, as well.

“We have a great defensive makeup,” he said at SEC Media Days. “Everybody has been buying in to what the coaches have been telling us, defensively we’ve been playing a lot better, especially as the summer and fall went on. We’re a lot more connected. Defense has a lot to do with communication and connectivity, but also heart. Everybody on my team competes at the highest level.

“No one likes to lose and we’ve got a bunch of winners. Defensively, we’ll be fine.”

There are fun offenses and gritty defenses throughout college basketball, good teams at every level capable of making a run in March. What separates this group, Butler says, are the pieces and their ability to fit together. They’ve meshed quicker than anticipated and it’s allowed everything else to fall into place quite nicely.

Very few can say they have that.

“It’s just the pace we go at. A lot of offense is similar at other schools, but it’s just how fast we move and also the players we have,” Butler said. “I think we have the perfect pieces to fit this offense. We have high-level shooting, guys that can get in the paint and our guys are good at finishing at the rim. It’s a collectiveness of all of that.”

Is it enough, though? Can this good team be a potentially great one — a true championship contender?

Butler is confident in his group to get there. He’s been there, hitting a game-winning buzzer-beater in the Final Four at San Diego State to advance to the national title game. If there is one person to trust when identifying a contender, it’s Kentucky’s starting point guard.

“We do have great potential. It starts with having great people and I feel like we all have great personalities,” he told KSR. “We have great, genuine guys from the jump. And then you attach that with the competitive spirit we’ve been playing with throughout practice, that doesn’t just come right away. Everybody’s had that for a while, the competition aspect — we compete at a high level.

“Putting those two things together with the coach and the play style we have, we have the right pieces to go out there and be great and win a national championship.”

Music to Big Blue Nation’s ears.