When Mark Pope took over as Kentucky’s men’s basketball coach, he inherited a completely blank slate. Not a single scholarship player returned from John Calipari’s final roster. To fill the void, Pope went heavy on experience, pulling together a veteran group with 586 combined career starts. That made the 2024–25 Wildcats the most experienced team in school history.
It worked at times. In last November’s Champions Classic, Kentucky rallied late to upset No. 6 Duke, a win that had Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer praising UK’s poise and maturity. But there was also a downside. Several of those “super-seniors,” using their final COVID-eligibility season, wore down or suffered injuries by year’s end.
Now, Pope’s second team looks very different. Heading into the 2025–26 season, Kentucky’s roster has 220 combined career starts — far less than last year’s group, but still more than most Calipari-era teams ever carried.
A Step Down From Last Year, but Still Experienced
Here’s the breakdown of UK’s returning experience:
Otega Oweh: 73 career starts (36 at Kentucky, 37 at Oklahoma)
Jaland Lowe: 50 starts at Pittsburgh
Brandon Garrison: 29 at Oklahoma State
Kam Williams: 28 at Tulane
Jayden Quaintance: 24 at Arizona State
Reece Potter: 11 at Miami (Ohio)
Denzell Aberdeen: 5 at Florida
In total: 220 starts. That’s just 37% of the combined experience Kentucky brought into last season. Yet compared historically, it would have ranked as the third most-experienced roster of the Calipari era, trailing only 2021–22 (367 career starts) and 2022–23 (262).
Calipari coached six teams at Kentucky that started the season with fewer than 60 combined career starts. The contrast shows Pope has landed somewhere between last year’s extreme veteran-heavy build and the youthful one-and-done groups that defined the program for over a decade.
What History Says About Championship Rosters
Experience has proven critical when it comes to winning NCAA titles. Over the past decade, only three true freshmen have started for a national champion: Jalen Brunson (2016 Villanova), Kihei Clark (2019 Virginia), and Stephon Castle (2024 Connecticut).
Otherwise, almost every starter who cut down the nets had been in college at least two years — and most had three or more seasons of development. In fact, Castle is the only one-and-done to start on a title team since Duke’s trio of Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow, and Tyus Jones in 2015.
That suggests Pope is right to value veterans while avoiding the pitfalls of an aging roster.
More Than Just Starting Experience
Counting starts doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, Denzel Aberdeen made only five starts at Florida, but he logged valuable minutes off the bench during the Gators’ national title run. Likewise, Mo Dioubate never started a game at Alabama, but he contributed for two years on a Final Four and Elite Eight team.
Those kinds of roles don’t show up in raw “career starts,” but they still provide the type of big-game seasoning Kentucky needs.
Pope’s “Sweet Spot”?
Compared with last year’s grizzled group, this Kentucky team is younger, fresher, and still plenty seasoned. Compared with Calipari’s younger squads, it carries significantly more experience.
Mark Pope may not have gone all-in on veterans this time, but he also hasn’t reverted back to relying on teenagers. Instead, he seems to be aiming for a middle ground — a “sweet spot” roster build that gives Kentucky both maturity and long-term growth.
If he’s right, it could be the recipe for taking the Wildcats where fans have been waiting for years: back to a Final Four.
