Travis Perry is Kentucky’s best shooter so far; Mark Pope also names their best defender
Big Blue Madness has finally arrived as the Kentucky Wildcats get ready to commence a new era of the program under Mark Pope.
The fanbase got a slight preview of the team on Monday night as the 10th annual NBA Pro Day took place at Memorial Coliseum. With some scrimmaging and drills on the docket, the team showed a few key things that will be a staple of the program moving forward: they are going to place fast and they are going to shoot the three.
With those things in mind, Coach Pope talked with Jack Pilgrim of KSR on a recent episode of the “Sources Say” podcast about who he thought the best shooter on the team was. His answer will not shock many of us here in the Bluegrass State.
“Best shooter? Travis Perry. You could qualify that a hundred different ways,” Pope told Pilgrim. “Travis is not the best off-the-move shooter, he’s not the best one-on-one shooter, he’s not the best in-game shot-maker yet, but I’ve never had a player in the summer come in and make 100 out of 100 free throws three days in a row. I’ve never seen that at any level of basketball. I’ve never seen it. It’s pretty cool.”
Perry holds the all-time scoring record in the state of Kentucky, and it has always been fairly obvious why. A sharpshooter from deep, Perry also started to see some more development working his way toward the rim, knocking down a few floaters on Monday night. If that continues, Perry could push for quite a few minutes this season.
Another staple that Coach Pope is getting his team to buy into is defense. We have become use to some lockdown defenders over the years, and now the Cats might have another one.
“Best defender? Lamont Butler,” Pope said. “Now, Amari (Williams) is going to be so mad at me. We actually had this conversation in practice (Thursday) because Lamont had three steals and deflections in ball screens where he sprinted to recover and then challenged the pass-out and got three deflections almost in like five possessions. I called him out and said, ‘Lamont is trying to be the SEC Defensive Player of the Year. The only problem we have, Amari, is that your boy is beating you out right now!’”
Williams is a two-time conference Defensive Player of the Year in his own right, but you could see the juice Butler brings on the defensive end.
With the games starting soon, we will start to see these questions get their own answers before our eyes.
Going to be a fun one.
