Kentucky vs. Wright State – UK Athletics

The preseason is in the books and now No. 23 Kentucky is ready for the regular season. The Cats open the 2024-25 season with a game against Wright State on Monday at Rupp Arena (7 p.m. ET, ESPNU).

UK earned two wins against Division II competition. The Cats defeated Kentucky Wesleyan 123-52 in the exhibition opener, placing eight players in double figures while shooting 21 of 42 from behind the arc. Then UK beat Minnesota State 98-67 and was 24 points ahead of Jaxson Robinson.

In the Minnesota State win, the Cats had some trouble making shots fall early. But Great Britain head coach Mark Pope liked his team's reaction.

“One of the best things about the (Minnesota State) game was there was all sorts of weirdness, us playing weird rotations against a really well-coached, good team,” Pope said. “There were a lot of oddities in the first 14 minutes and I think the score was 23-20. (In the next three minutes our boys had gone on a 17-0 run and we hope that is a defining characteristic of our team.”

Pope, who is preparing for his first game as head coach at his alma mater, appreciates some of his team's qualities that allow him to score a game-winning run.

“There are two things. The first part of this is our guys are super resilient and we have a team that can fix things,” Pope said. “We are an experienced team, we see the game, we understand the game. And the second part is, we know it's always coming. As aggressive as we are offensively and as solid as we can be defensively, we always know that it could be in the first five minutes of the game, it could be in the last seven minutes of the game, there will be two or more three-minute Run where there will be the death knell, where we make it. I like these two characteristics of this team.”

Kentucky's opponent on Monday, Wright State, was 18-14 last season and returns several key pieces from last year's squad. Among them is junior forward Alex Noel, who was named Horizon League Preseason Player of the Year for this season. Noel averaged 14.5 points and eight rebounds per game last year.

Preseason is over and starting Monday, the Cats will begin a new regular season with a new head coach and essentially an entirely new team.