Tom Leach sees some Air Raid in Mark Pope's new system, plus lots more Leach on KSR

The Voice of the Wildcats, Tom Leach, spent an hour with Kentucky Sports Radio on Friday morning. Leach hosts his own weekday radio show, The Leach Report, each morning from 8 to 9 a.m. on the same station. However, he was kind enough to log a few more radio hours before the weekend for a conversation with KSR and the show’s callers.

Oh, you haven’t heard?? @tomleachKY was on KSR today!

If you missed it live, there's still time to catch the great show with Tom Leach and the KSR crew.
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— Mario A Maitland (@MarioMaitland_3) July 12, 2024

Topics included Leach’s career in broadcasting and his youth as a Bourbon County High School baseball star. KSR listener Corey Price even dug up an old newspaper clipping from Leach’s high school baseball career. The newspaper text reads, “He plans to attend the University of Kentucky as a communications major with hopes of becoming the next Cawood Ledford as the “voice of the Kentucky Wildcats.” How’s that for calling his shot?

Leach told KSR what went into living out his childhood dream and what goes into calling games in Rupp Arena and Kroger Field today. Some of his favorites include Tayshaun versus North Carolina, Anthony Davis’ block, and Benny Snell’s record-setting touchdown. He also explained how “Touchdown Kentucky!!!” was born.

Of course, KSR had to get Leach’s thoughts on the new era of Kentucky Basketball after 15 years with John Calipari, too. He recalled some of his old Calipari postgame interviews and looked forward to a new era with Mark Pope.

Air Raid similarities

Tom Leach has yet to see much of Kentucky’s summer basketball practices, so his inside knowledge of how the individual players look in practice is limited. Still, he spoke highly of the addition of Jaxson Robinson as the only player connection to Pope at BYU, saying Robinson’s ability to translate Pope’s system is a huge plus for the roster, among other reasons.

Leach’s most intriguing comment about the new brand of Kentucky was his comparison of Pope’s offense to the installation of another new and innovative offense across town in the 1990s. Hal Mumme brought the Air Raid system to Kentucky Football, heavily emphasizing throwing the ball and scoring points by trusting his playmakers. In some ways, Leach sees a little Air Raid in Pope’s offense, in how it’s free-flowing and player-driven.

“When I hear Mark talking about the offense and see it, the players talking about it, it reminds me a lot–it’s crossing sports–of the way they talked about the Air Raid offense in those early days,” he explained. “Their thing was always “throw it to the grass”; that’s what they coached the quarterbacks to do, Tim Couch and Dusty (Bonner). Throw it to the grass. And that meant scan the field and find open space where you had a one-on-one matchup, and throw the ball there.”

Leach added, “Again, it was all about getting, you know, athletes in space and where you could make a play. Mumme always said anybody can come watch his practices because they weren’t gonna see much because they really didn’t have many plays because a lot of it’s dictated off of, ‘you’re Craig Yeast, and he’s Tim Couch, and you guys kind of see the same thing,’ and it’s maybe a non-verbal communication or a nod of the head or something, but it’s just through thousands of repetitions, and, you know, understanding each other.

“And it sounds a lot like that to me with this basketball system that Mark is bringing in from BYU, where it’s just a lot of reading the defense, reading your teammates, kind of playing off each other and not a lot of set plays.”

Listen to Tom Leach on KSR

You can hear the interview with Tom Leach in the second half of the first hour and the first half of the second hour.