Kentucky is focused on "being present in the moment," not looking ahead

The Wildcats want to focus on that all year long.

Nov 4, 2024; Lexington, Kentucky, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope motions to his players during the second half against the Wright State Raiders at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. Mandatory Credit: Jordan Prather-Imagn Images / Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

Kentucky is coming off of a dominating season-opening win over Wright State. With Bucknell on Saturday, it can be easy to overlook it with the highly-anticipated matchup with Duke next Tuesday. The Wildcats are trying not to do just that.

Mark Pope is emphasizing not looking ahead (or behind) this season, and he is stressing "being present in the moment," even during games.

"It's something we practice everyday, we talk about it. We talk about it before the game, this is the biggest game we've ever played. Two ways: One is just the way we go about business. Everybody's human, and so we all can get distracted by all kinds of things. We get distracted by things going wrong, things going right, and things in the future and things in the past. In fact, all of the gravity as an athlete is trying to pull you away from being focused on right now. We practice this on a daily basis about, can we just be here right now? That's gonna also be a determining factor in how good we are as a team."

- Pope on being in the moment.

How do they go about doing that? Cutting out distractions, and that doesn't just mean in games, but also in every shootaround before games, and Pope says it's probably their only time in their daily lives that it happens.

"One of the things we do in shootaround is we'll just have almost five minutes of absolute quiet, in terms of any communication. We even had some people in the upper deck that were working at the gym the other day that I asked to please be quiet during those five minutes. I think it's probably for these guys, it's probably the only five minutes during their entire week, including sleep, where they're not having any external input. When you can focus, whether it's by taking away the external input or by blocking it out, usually it's by both, that's when you have real power to function and perform at the highest level."

- Pope on how they go about being present.

Pope knows that they do not need to look ahead at all, and he also knows just how to make sure they stay in the moment. It's a mindset that could lead to huge success this season for the Wildcats.