{"id":91366,"date":"2025-08-18T07:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T07:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/91366\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T07:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T07:55:10","slug":"mark-pope-cant-keep-denzel-aberdeen-out-of-the-practice-gym","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/91366\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Pope can’t keep Denzel Aberdeen out of the practice gym"},"content":{"rendered":"

After eight weeks of summer practice, Mark Pope<\/a> gave his Kentucky Wildcats some time off before the fall semester begins later this month. But he\u2019s having trouble keeping all of his players out of the Joe Craft Center practice gym, even while conducting an interview in his office right above the court. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to kick everybody off campus. To try to get everybody off campus to go home and refresh.\u201d\u00a0Pope said earlier this week on the\u00a0Eye on College Basketball\u00a0with Matt Norlander<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cAnd then I\u2019m sitting here in the office, and Denzel Aberdeen<\/a> is down there in a full sweat getting a ton of work done. Reece Potter<\/a> is out there getting shots. <\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, you think about DA. He\u2019s got a national championship ring on his finger, and in our one week off, where we\u2019ve told these guys they\u2019re banned from the gym, these guys are still breaking in. That\u2019s the type of group we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

This shouldn\u2019t be too shocking to hear. If anyone knows what it takes to win at this level, it\u2019s Aberdeen. After improving his individual game across all three seasons at Florida, capped with a national championship victory as a junior back in the spring, he transferred to Kentucky for a new challenge in what will be his final college run. It\u2019s also nice to see Potter, a seven-footer coming over from a lower-level program in Miami (OH), embracing the grind, too. <\/p>\n

Norlander did push back a touch, asking Pope how these guys are still able to get into the practice gym against the coach\u2019s orders. For one, Pope is confident his players will still dedicate at least a few days off from working out during this break. But secondly, he\u2019s not going to tell a group of players hungry to get better that they can\u2019t eat, especially when it comes to someone like Aberdeen.<\/p>\n

\u201cDenzel, in the gym right now. Winner, winner, winner,\u201d Pope said when asked to quickly describe Aberdeen. \u201cHe\u2019s just a winner. He\u2019s got a championship ring, man. That\u2019s hard to get. He\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

A seasoned super athlete at 6-foot-5 with a 42-inch vertical, Aberdeen expects to play a significant role for the Wildcats in 2025-26, potentially as a starter. He averaged 7.7 points in 19.8 minutes per outing last season off the bench on a loaded Gators\u2019 squad. But when given starter minutes, he stood out: 14.4 points, 2.6 assists, and 2.4 rebounds in 29.8 minutes per outing while shooting 42.9 percent from the field and 41.4 percent from deep across five games as a starter against SEC foes. <\/p>\n

If Aberdeen can put up comparable numbers in his role at Kentucky, all those extra hours in the gym will not only pay off for him as an individual but also for the Wildcats\u2019 chances of making a deep NCAA Tournament run.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Join KSR Plus! With a KSR Plus membership, you get access to bonus content and KSBoard, KSR\u2019s message board, to chat with fellow Cats fans and get exclusive scoop.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After eight weeks of summer practice, Mark Pope gave his Kentucky Wildcats some time off before the fall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,62345,24233,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-91366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denzel-aberdeen-22-dr-phillips","10":"tag-mark-pope-91-newport-senior","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaabasketball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91366","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=91366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}