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Game day: Kentucky 123, Kentucky Wesleyan 52

Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday night’s men’s basketball exhibition game between Kentucky and Kentucky Wesleyan in Rupp Arena.

It can be difficult to glean too much from a college basketball game in October.

The regular season is still a couple of weeks away. The competition — relative to what these Kentucky Wildcats will see in the near future — isn’t that great. There’s a lot of ball to be played between now and March.

But if what happened in Rupp Arena on Wednesday night — a 123-52 victory over Kentucky Wesleyan in Mark Pope’s first exhibition game as UK’s head coach — can tell those who watched anything, it’s that they should take these Cats at their word. And while there is indeed a long way to go between now and March, this Kentucky team has clearly come quite a long way already.

The game Wednesday night started innocently enough. The Cats scored the first two baskets. The Panthers scored the next two. The game was tied 4-all, and then the onslaught began.

This UK basketball preseason was filled with hype over Pope’s innovative offensive approach. Lots of pace, lots of points, lots of fun. It took only two or three minutes for that to become a reality.

It happened so quickly, it was easy to lose track. In a matter of six minutes and change, a 4-4 game turned into a 27-6 lead for the Wildcats, who smothered Wesleyan defensively and attacked the basket relentlessly.

Before the final TV timeout of the first half, the Cats led by 30. At halftime, that lead was 36.

Drew Cooper, the head coach of a Kentucky Wesleyan squad that returned most of its core players from a team that made the NCAA Division II Tournament last season, tried to sum up what it was like to be on the other end of UK’s offense.

“I was surprised that they only had eight 3s in the first half,” he said. “It felt like 14 to me.”

By the end, the stat sheet was simply a series of superlatives in favor of Pope’s squad.

Kentucky made 21 of 42 attempts from 3-point range. The Cats hit on 27 of 34 shots from inside the arc. Eight players scored in double figures, led by Jaxson Robinson with 19 points. Seven players made at least one 3-pointer. That group didn’t even include some of the team’s best 3-point shooters. Nobody played more than 25 minutes.

Most amazingly — for a team consisting of 12 new scholarship players, none of them ever teammates before this year — was the way the ball moved.

Kentucky had 32 assists on 48 made baskets. Eleven different Wildcats tallied at least one. And the Cats — playing outside competition for the first time — had just five turnovers on the night.

To prepare for this game, Cooper said he and his coaches obviously didn’t have much film to go on. Big Blue Madness didn’t reveal anything about these Wildcats, and last week’s Blue-White scrimmage wasn’t televised.

So Wesleyan looked at tape of last season’s BYU team, knowing Pope wanted to play a similar style at Kentucky and hoping to learn something about what they might see from his Wildcats in game one. What Cooper ended up seeing is a team on its way to something special.

“I wasn’t surprised, because you watch BYU, and you just see the direction that this is going,” he said. “… You got really, really good basketball players that are bought into a system and sacrificing individual agendas to make an extra pass or to cut hard. You know, even if they’re not going to be the scorer in the play, they cut hard, and they do things and they create opportunities for their teammates that make it very difficult.

“So that’s kind of what we saw when we were watching BYU from the film last year. And you know, tonight, it very much resembled that.”

Kentucky head coach Mark Pope speaks with, from left to right, Ansley Almonor, Trent Noah, Collin Chandler, Walker Horn and Travis Perry during a timeout late in Wednesday’s game. Ryan C. Hermens rhermens@herald-leader.comTo Cooper’s point, these Cats always seemed to be in the right place and making the right play. They passed up good shots for great ones, worked off the ball, spaced the floor and found the openings created by others.

The entire offseason was spent talking about how quickly this Kentucky team jelled under the unique circumstances of being thrown together at the last minute following the April departure of John Calipari — nine transfers out of the portal and three new recruits forming one unit with little time to figure things out.

They’ve thought they might have something special for a while now, but Kentucky’s coaches and players were pining for outside competition to see what the Cats actually looked like. Turns out they looked pretty good. Perhaps better than anyone should have realistically expected.

“Everybody meshed really well, which I’m not surprised about it, because I’ve seen it in practice,” said Koby Brea, who scored 13 points and was 3-for-5 on 3-pointers. “But to see it against the outside competition was really good.”

Otega Oweh scored 18 points — second-most on the team — and was 7-for-9 from the field.

“Obviously, you have a vision of how you want to play and practice and all those things. But once you get to play someone else, and you see that everything that you’ve worked on in practice, you’re doing it in games — that’s huge for the players,” he said. “That gives you extra confidence. And also for the coaches, because then you can know that, ‘All right. Everyone’s selfless. They’re going to play the right way.’

“And so we can continue to add things in practice and just grow off of that.”

Trent Noah, the 11th player in the rotation Wednesday night, didn’t even get into the game until midway through the second half. The freshman from Harlan County missed his first 3-point attempt. A few minutes later, he made his second. And then his third. And fourth. And fifth.

Noah finished with 12 points in nine minutes, 4-for-5 from deep. Even the last guy on the bench showed he could play, and he spoke afterward of the “sky high” chemistry this team has found.

The fact that it’s seemingly coming together so quickly?

“I think that just shows the sky’s the limit,” Noah said. “I mean, it’s really our first game as one unit, and we have a 32-to-5 assist-to-turnover ratio. So I just think that shows just how scary that we can be, and that we’re already making plays for each other.

“I mean, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like whenever we’re playing together for months and months.”

Kentucky fans can surely imagine. And dream that the hope ushered in by the Pope era will bring winning results from now through the NCAA Tournament, a setting in which the new head coach has already promised his program will flourish.

Again, that’s a long way away. This night served as an introduction for many fans.

Several impressed right off the bat.

Oweh was aggressive early, and he received the first appreciative round of applause from the Rupp Arena fans when checking out of the game in the first half.

Lamont Butler, the target of much of Pope’s offseason praise, quickly endeared himself to the crowd. He had 11 points and six rebounds and six assists — impressive all around — but the 6-2 guard also had six steals and two blocked shots.

Known for his defense, Butler set the tone and showed that this Kentucky team won’t be a gimmick that relies solely on scoring points.

“Lamont Butler had more steals than our whole team had turnovers tonight,” Pope said, awe in his voice. “I’ve never seen that.”

Kentucky’s Lamont Butler, who finished with six steals Wednesday night, tracks down a loose ball. Ryan C. Hermens rhermens@herald-leader.comAmari Williams dazzled with six assists of his own. He’s the starting center, 7 feet tall and 262 pounds but one of the team’s best playmakers and their top post defender.

Ansley Almonor came off the bench to make 5 of 7 shots from 3-point range. Others didn’t fill up the stat sheet, but everyone contributed, and between this exhibition and last week’s Blue-White scrimmage, it’s clear that this team can go 12 deep, if necessary.

There were only 11 scholarship Wildcats available Wednesday night. Kerr Kriisa — arguably the most exciting offensive player on the team — remained sidelined with a hamstring injury, but he went through extensive workouts on the Rupp court hours before the game and is expected to be just fine for the season opener against Wright State on Nov. 4.

He was plenty active against Kentucky Wesleyan.

“Everybody on the bench was losing their mind with Trent (making those 3-pointers),” Pope said. “I thought Kerr was gonna, I mean, I don’t know — I thought he was gonna start ripping his clothes off, he was so excited.”

At the beginning of the night, it was Pope — the former UK player who won a national title in 1996 and promised to hang more banners in Rupp when he was introduced as the team’s new head coach back in April — who got the biggest cheer, by far, from the Kentucky fans.

The crowd — officially listed at 18,522 — popped when Pope’s name was called in the pregame introductions. Before too long, it might be Butler or Robinson or Oweh or someone else who gets the biggest roar before the ball is tipped.

“Well, I think this is special for all of us, right? This is really never going to be about me,” Pope said. “You know, I’m the most blessed person in the world that I get to be back here as a part of BBN, and I think I’m really blessed that I get to coach this group of guys. And we still have so much growing to do. But the fact that we get to be in this building with these great fans and wearing this incredibly tradition-filled, flagship jersey is just super humbling.

“All those things are really meaningful to me. It’s incredibly important.”

Next game

Minnesota State at No. 23 Kentucky