Kentucky basketball has a brand new coaching staff, and where these coaches were previously will prove to be huge next season.
Head Coach Mark Pope and assistant coach Cody Fueger both came to Kentucky from BYU. Associate head coach Alvin Brooks III came to Lexington from Baylor. What do Baylor and BYU both have in common? Well, they are both in the Big 12.
The Big 12 is the conference that Texas and Oklahoma just left to join the SEC. The Kentucky Wildcats won’t host either of these teams in Rupp Arena this season, but they will go on the road to play both of them. The good news for Kentucky fans is this staff has coached against these teams and coached in these environments.
Brooks III coached at Baylor for eight seasons before making the move to Kentucky, so he has played a lot of games against the SEC’s two newest schools.
This, plus Pope and Fueger’s experience against these teams, will prove huge when the Wildcats have to hit the road and play both Texas and Oklahoma.
Understanding the system other teams run is important, and while coaches will be able to pick up on it watching film having played against it multiple times in person is how you really learn, and this staff has that experience.
Playing these two teams on the road will be tough for the Wildcats, but the staff’s experience should help the team have the best possible scouting reports for what to expect in Austin and Norman.
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Some days, he pretended to be Rex Chapman in the 1990 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, recreating all those aerial assaults on an 8-foot goal. But most days, if grade-school Reed Sheppard was shooting on his backyard basketball hoop, he imagined that he was … himself in a Kentucky uniform. The seconds ticked down, the Wildcats needed a bucket, and the kid from London, Ky., was going to deliver.
I’ve always been a little boy from Kentucky who wanted to play at Kentucky,” Sheppard says. “It feels like that was me just two days ago, out in the yard with my friends and my cousins, taking that last shot for Kentucky.”
Today, there are children across the state pretending to be Reed Sheppard. More specifically, Reed Sheppard on Tuesday night at Mississippi State, where the Wildcats trailed by 13 in the second half before the boy wonder turned his lifelong vision into reality. Sheppard scored 23 points in the final 13 minutes — 11 of those in the last 93 seconds — and buried a game-winning floater with a half-tick to go in Starkville. His heroics kept alive 16th-ranked Kentucky’s hopes of winning an SEC championship and stoked dreams of a deep NCAA Tournament run. He’d already put together a terrific freshman season, but this was a superstar performance: 32 points, seven assists, five rebounds, two blocks, two steals. And that boy-in-the-backyard moment.
“To hit a game-winning shot for Kentucky,” Sheppard says, “was really special for me.”