Nearly every team has a pre-game ritual and the routine rarely changes regardless of the venue, whether it’s at home or away.
Before Kentucky’s 78-73 win at Tennessee on Tuesday night, Wildcats associate head coach Alvin Brooks took his turn saying the team’s pregame prayer, a routine Kentucky follows before every game.
The focus of the prayer, Kentucky coach Mark Pope said, was making sure the team had the confidence they needed to bounce back after suffering back-to-back setbacks to Alabama at home, followed by a road loss at Vanderbilt last Saturday.
“He prayed that we could have confidence, but even more importantly, that we could have 'Godfidence,’” Pope said. “I’d never heard 'Godfidence' before, but I love it because that's just — there's a little bit of this team, for me, and we're a pretty faithful team, there's a little bit of us that is, we're kind of in some ways, performing for an audience of one the best we can.”
That Godfidence, Pope said, played a role in the team’s ability to believe in themselves, although the odds were stacked against the Wildcats. In addition to two straight losses, a first under Pope, Kentucky was without its starting point guard, Lamont Butler, while starting forward Andrew Carr played just one minute in the contest.
“It was easy to double down on that after the game,” Pope said. “We’re really blessed.”
Pope and his staff have players — Ansley Almonor and Koby Brea who stepped up and stood out in times of adversity. The two veteran reserves combined for 30 points and seven 3-pointers in the win over the Volunteers.
Almonor, Pope said, “makes the team special” and not just on the court. The Kentucky coach praised Almonor's ability to shine without the spotlight.
“Everybody kind of has the headline guy and very few teams have the guy that's really, really, really good that's going to win you games that is like 'I'm gonna do whatever the team needs,’ especially a fifth-year senior that's like, 'I'll do whatever the team needs,’” Pope said. “If you play me tonight, great, then I'm going to go play great and if you don't play me I'm going to love these guys.
"Those are the guys that go on to do insanely special things in life. He's he's really special.”
The team’s identity of overcoming adversity didn’t just happen after breaking even in the first six conference games. It began during the preseason, long before the season opener and the first exhibition game of the Pope era.
“This is a team that we believed from the outs, from the first few months, we believed that we would have resilience,” Pope said. “That's what we thought we were like, 'we will have resilience,' because these guys are loving each other enough that we're a really good team.”
NEXT GAME: Arkansas at Kentucky, 8 p.m., Saturday. TV/Radio: ESPN, UK Radio Network SuperTalk 94.3 WKYX, WiLLiE 102
Ansley Almonor celebrates during Kentucky's win over Tennessee Tuesday night in Knoxville. (UK Athletics Photo)
