Dominika Paurov\u00e1 describes herself as a \u201cdynamic player\u201d and that\u2019s why Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks was so happy to add her to his first roster at UK last season.<\/p>\n
The Czech Republic native played in 35 games at Oregon State during the 2023-2024 season and averaged 5.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 16.4 minutes per game for an Elite Eight team. She shot 48% from the field and 37% from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-1 guard missed last season after injuring her knee playing with her national team against Iceland in Bulgaria last summer. She needed surgery and did not get to Lexington until mid-August in 2024 and spent last season rehabbing her knee.<\/p>\n
Now she\u2019s healthy and ready to help offset the loss of All-American guard Georgia Amoore and shooting guard Dazia Lawrence off last year\u2019s team that finished fourth in the SEC and won one NCAA Tournament game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to play hard on defense and offense. I can drive to the basket. This past year I had a lot of time to work on my footwork and shooting technique,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said. \u201cI can play multiple positions, but I like playing as a guard the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both of her parents played basketball. Her dad, Martin Paur, played professionally in a Czech league while her mom played just for fun \u201cbut loves basketball\u201d as much as anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been in the gym since I was in diapers. I had my small basketball. Once we grew up a little bit my parents made me and my sister costume jerseys. That was really cool and I still have that jersey,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I was in the gym all the time, my parents didn\u2019t want to force basketball on us so I did every other sport possible. It was around third grade when I started playing and I played with boys at first and then my parents actually started coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her \u201cother\u201d sports included swimming, skiing, competitive water rescue, volleyball, windsurfing, track and field, and tennis.<\/p>\n
She swam in elementary school and was a five-time Czech national champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents taught me to swim when I was 2 years old. In first grade we went to swimming classes with my school and the coach was surprised I could already swim and asked if I wanted to join the team. I joined and did both swimming and basketball for quite a while,\u201d the UK redshirt sophomore said. \u201cI still like to swim but I like basketball more.\u201d<\/p>\n
She placed third in the Czech nationals in skiing in 2016. She said her parents put her on skis at the top of the hill and told her to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe skied like 30 days each winter until I got more serious with basketball,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said. \u201cThere was a competition with like 10 qualification windows and I qualified for nationals and ended up third, which made me kind of mad that I didn\u2019t win. I tried again the next year but unfortunately had an accident. I really liked skiing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In competitive water rescue, she was a national champion. She grew a bit weary of swimming from one end of the pool to the other and back when she decided to join the competitive water rescue team.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had to rescue this plastic person and swim under obstacles and stuff like that. That was more entertaining for me and I really enjoyed it,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said. \u201cI played soccer for a little bit because my cousins played. I surfed when we traveled. I danced. I can snowboard. But honestly, tennis, cycling, rollerblading \u2026 pretty much anything you can think of, I tried because we are a sports family. I have even recently tried pickleball.\u201d<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s not enough, she not only speaks Czech and English but is also fluent in Russian. She\u2019s currently learning Spanish.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started learning English in third grade but learning English in school was not ideal. So in sixth grade, my mom sent me to England by myself for two weeks. Just put me on a plane and sent me off. I was going to school Monday through Friday each morning and then had other activities,\u201d the UK player said. \u201cI rode horses there, so I can do that too. I learned to speak English and lost the fear of speaking English.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following year, her parents sent her to Malta for three weeks by herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was way different because I was way more independent there. I lived in a hotel with other students as a seventh-grader. We traveled the island on the bus,\u201d she laughed and said.<\/p>\n
Paurov\u00e1 played on the Czech Republic U14, U15, U18, U19 and U20 teams between 2018 and 2023. On the U18 team, she was considered a most valuable player candidate at the FIBA European Championship in 2022, averaging 14.7 points and 9.3 rebounds per game at the tournament.<\/p>\n
She came to the U.S. for her high school senior year and helped DME Academy in Florida to the Sunshine Independent Athletic Association State Championship by averaging 11.5 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game.<\/p>\n
She has a family group chat and still depends on her mother for her morning wake-up call.<\/p>\n
\u201cl am scared my alarm won\u2019t go off, so the night before in our chat I tell my mum what time I want to wake up and thanks to the time change (her mother is six hours ahead time-wise) she wakes me up,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said.<\/p>\n
She goes home each summer to visit and takes her family a special gift that has nothing to do with basketball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no plastic cups, no plastic straws. Everything is paper. It\u2019s super annoying,\u201d Paurov\u00e1 said. \u201cWhen I go home every summer I bring like two packs of plastic straws for my family and they really appreciate me doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noah\u2019s growth in a year<\/p>\n
A year ago Trent Noah was \u201ca disaster\u201d as he tried to adjust to being a University of Kentucky basketball player. The Harlan County High School star was coming off a brilliant high school career that ended with his team losing in the state title game. However, transitioning to playing for new UK coach Mark Pope last summer was not easy.<\/p>\n
Pope told Matt Norlander of CBS Sports that Noah had trouble \u201cunderstanding\u201d what UK was trying to do on both ends of the floor. He still managed to play in 24 games as a true freshman.<\/p>\n
Now teammates are calling him not only the best shooter on the team but one of the best in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrent, he doesn\u2019t miss,\u201d UK freshman Braydon Hawthorne said.<\/p>\n
Pope is even more impressed with Noah\u2019s improved leadership. The 6-foot-5 sophomore is now one of the players showing newcomers what to do and what is expected of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really fun to watch Trent Noah,\u201d Pope told Norlander. \u201cOne year later, he walks in, and he\u2019s the most veteran, seasoned voice on the floor. He\u2019s like, \u2018Guys, just everyone relax. Let me explain what Coach is saying right now.\u2019 It\u2019s actually so fun to watch from summer to summer and season to season, watching these guys grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pope said earlier in the summer that \u201cbeing a Kentucky legend is different than being anything anywhere else\u201d but predicted Noah could handle any pressure because he is \u201cmade different\u201d from most players.<\/p>\n
Pope knows year two should be easier for Noah like it has been for most players he\u2019s coached.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese kids, these young people, they are just so dynamic as human beings. So much of what happens on the court is what they take into it that day. Their lives can change so fast. We\u2019re not dealing with someone that\u2019s actually in the same space in their life right now today as they will be in three months \u2014 thankfully, right? Because they\u2019re growing, so there is some error rate,\u201d Pope told Norlander.<\/p>\n
Volleyball keeps schedule tough<\/p>\n
Kentucky volleyball always plays a demanding non-conference schedule and this year is no different with the Cats playing Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Penn State and Louisville, last year\u2019s Final Four teams. However, coach Craig Skinner believes he has a roster that can cope with the scheduling challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have players that played against really good teams last year,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cWe have experience returning. There\u2019s inexperience in the setting position and on the right side. But the decision was to schedule tough because we have some great players and have a chance at the end of the year to compete for a national championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skinner said he had no choice but to be part of these high profile matchups. Kentucky plays Nebraska Sunday in the Broadway Block Party in Nashville on ABC-TV. The Cats play at defending national champion Penn State Friday on FOX-TV. They play Pittsburgh Sept. 10 in the Shriners Children\u2019s Showdown in Ft. Worth, Texas, on ESPN. Skinner\u2019s team will play at Louisville, runner-up to Penn State in 2024, at the YUM Center Sept. 18 on ESPNU.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to learn about our team. So this schedule is what we typically do but maybe even a little bit tougher with all of the Final Four teams from last year on our schedule,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cBut I do not feel like we will get to where we want to go if we don\u2019t play these teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skinner knows the \u201cmost powerful teams\u201d are player driven and he likes his team\u2019s potential to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can drag them down the tracks, but it\u2019s not going to be as powerful as if they\u2019re driving the train on their own,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cAll of them are recruited into this knowing that this is your program. Wherever you take us is where we\u2019re going to go and they all have to help guide us down the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur staff will help get us going in the right direction, but you (players) have to drive the bus. I kind of joke in the recruiting process, if they aren\u2019t able to coach their own team when they leave this program, then we failed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Kentucky men\u2019s basketball coach John Calipari preached that Kentucky was not for everyone. Skinner tells potential recruits the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cA program like this is not for everybody and that\u2019s OK,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cIf you want to play at this level you have got to crave volleyball. If you don\u2019t crave it you probably will not do well at this level because it consumes you.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kids crave volleyball and crave Kentucky. We talk about competing for championships. We have not talked about winning the SEC or national title since the first team meeting we had. We talk about playing in a way worthy of winning. If you are doing that then you have a chance to get victories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Could Waller be breakout star?<\/p>\n
Last season Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston continued his development and became a first-round NFL Draft pick by the Buffalo Bills.<\/p>\n
Could cornerback DJ Waller be the breakout star on this season\u2019s UK defense?<\/p>\n
\u201cDJ is unique in terms of what he can do. It took him a while to understand our process (after transferring from Michigan). He came from a program that had a lot of success and we did things differently, so it took him a little bit of time to transition,\u201d Kentucky secondary coach Chris Collins said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a seamless transition to understand the expectation, the level of work, the accountability, things of that nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe slowly started to buy into that (last season), and his play started to elevate, and elevated fairly quickly. Now it is about consistency. I don\u2019t ever want to put something on a young man that they didn\u2019t necessarily ask for. I don\u2019t know what the future holds. I know the young man loves ball. He\u2019s been really, really engaged this summer and he\u2019s seen a lot of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collins warned that Waller, who started four games last season before missing the final four games due to an injury, will have his \u201cups and downs\u201d this season like most players do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fickle position. I\u2019m excited about where he is and his growth. He does have a big upside. I tell guys every day that potential is a dangerous word because a lot of people have it, but a few people reach it,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n
Quotes of the Week<\/p>\n
No. 1: \u201cThe closest I had been to this area was Texas. Texas gets hot but not humid like this. It took me a while to not be dying on that (practice) field. I am fine now. At Washington State we would be practicing in the snow and then go to UCLA to play and I am dying. Thank God we are not going to Florida (to play). I heard the Swamp was really humid,\u201d Washington State transfer David Gusta on adjusting to Lexington weather.<\/p>\n
No. 2: \u201cWhen you ask me, the biggest thing is that my heart is full of gratitude in a really sincere sense. The fact that we had 27,000 people show up for my press conference, which didn\u2019t really have much to do with me but what BBN is. Forever in my life, I\u2019ll be grateful for all those people that trekked from wherever and stood in line forever to come here. It\u2019s hard to express how grateful I am,\u201d Kentucky coach Mark Pope on the \u201cEye on College Basketball Podcast\u201d on what he was most grateful for during his first year at Kentucky.<\/p>\n
No. 3: \u201cVery cerebral and I heard he\u2019s pretty good at chess. He\u2019s a cool guy and he runs a tight crew,\u201d UK offensive tackle Shiyazh Pete on Kentucky men\u2019s basketball coach Mark Pope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominika Paurov\u00e1 describes herself as a \u201cdynamic player\u201d and that\u2019s why Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks was so happy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-118959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}