A conversation with Goose Givens on what he's seen in Kentucky practice sessions

Jack “Goose” Givens is, without question, one of the greatest Kentucky basketball players of all time.

He was the Most Outstanding Player of the 1978 Final Four — where he scored 41 points in a national title game victory over Duke — and one of only three 2,000-point scorers in the program’s history.

The Lexington native is also entering his fifth season as the game analyst for the UK Sports Network’s radio broadcasts, and he has been a fixture at the Wildcats’ practices this summer and fall.

Givens shared some insights from those sessions with Inside Kentucky Basketball, offering up his thoughts on coach Mark Pope’s 2026-27 team as the Cats near their regular season opener against Manhattan on Nov. 3 in Rupp Arena.

Here’s that conversation:

Over the course of the summer and fall, has there been one thing that stands out about this team, good or bad, you've noticed that you think might define this bunch?

“Well, one thing I do like is how well they have come together as a unit since I first started watching them back in June. You could tell there were a lot of good pieces out there; a lot of pretty decent players who could come together — if they could — to make a good team. And from then to now is kind of like night and day, how they’ve come together and they all seem to be on the same page. A real big reminder to me of how Mark's first team came together, and how quickly they did. So I'm very pleased with that.”

Is there any one player — or a smaller group of players — that has facilitated that? Or is that Mark Pope? Or has it been kind of an overall team effort?

“Well, first and foremost, it starts with Mark. I mean, Mark seems to me like he has a whole different attitude approach to how he's coaching this year. I think Mark was a little bit lighter on last year's bunch, because of the makeup of last year's team, as opposed to this team. His first team, he didn't have to be the kind of coach who constantly drove the players, got on them and stayed on them, and held them accountable. He didn't really have to do a lot of that, because he had such a special group.

“And I think he kind of felt like last year's team was going to be a lot of the same. But, as it turns out, it wasn't. It was a whole different team, and they probably needed to be handled differently than they were, when it comes to the demands he put on them to stay focused in practice, to pay more attention to details, all of that. Last year's team, it seemed like they never were on the same page with that. This year's team, he has been a lot more vocal, a lot more, ‘Pay attention to detail.’ That approach. And I think it's been good with this team, and it shows with how quickly they've come together.