Mark Pope will play a lot of players this season leading to fresh legs for Kentucky

Kentucky's players will be fresh this season.

Kentucky head coach Mark Pope before the game of La Familia against Herd That in the Lexington Regional Final of the TBT. July 23, 2024 / Scott Utterback/Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK

It's hard to win a close basketball game when your players are absolutely gassed in the final five minutes of the game. This can be seen a lot with teams that only play seven or eight guys. Teams that have to run their best players for 32-35 minutes a game sometimes see those players run out of gas late.

That won't be a problem for this 2024-25 Kentucky basketball team for two reasons. Reason one is that this team is truly 12 players deep who could all play at a high level. Reason two is that Coach Mark Pope loves to keep his players' minutes low, so his stars are fresh for the last few minutes of games.

Last season at BYU, Coach Pope had six players over 20 minutes a game. Not one of those six players played thirty minutes a game. He also had two players that had significant roles play less than 20 minutes a game.

This means that with how deep of a roster Kentucky has for the 2024-25 season, it won't be hard to make sure each player has fresh legs at the end of the game.

This matters at the end of close basketball games. More times than not, the team that has more gas left in the tank will get the win, and that will be Kentucky this season.

This is part of what makes Coach Pope such an elite coach is that he is always taking care of the little things. Having fresh legs will also help the Wildcats in March.