Mark Pope had a press conference on Monday where the local Kentucky media were able to hear him speak for the first time in a while. Many questions were asked about how the team was progressing over the summer, and Pope had a lot of good things to say. <\/p>\n
Towards the end of the press conference, Coach Pope was asked about freshman Braydon Hawthorne, and Kentucky fans will love what he had to say. <\/p>\n
Coach Pope compared Hawthorne to all-time Kentucky legend, and when fans hear who the player is, this will make sense. <\/p>\n
Here is what Pope had to say about Hawthorne and the former Kentucky star he compared him to: “There is a whole bunch Tayshaun Prince in this kid, and I know those are some big words.” <\/p>\n
Hawthorne is a 6’8 175-pound freshman, and it is clear that he has the skillset to be a star in the future. He can shoot the ball at a high level and has a great handle, which at his height will make him an NBA prospect. <\/p>\n
There is no question that Hawthorne has some weight to put on, but that will be a goal over the next few months.<\/p>\n
Many imagined Hawthorne would be a project for this Kentucky basketball team, but it sounds like there is a world where he could work his way into playing time this season. <\/p>\n
Down the road, Hawthorne is going to be a star for the Wildcats, and he made it clear that he won’t be leaving Kentucky unless it is for the NBA. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Pope had a press conference on Monday where the local Kentucky media were able to hear him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-27048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27048","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=27048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}