Mark Pope had a simple message for Justin McBride before Kentucky ever got to Friday night’s showdown with James Madison: rebound.
Actually, Pope tried to make sure the message landed from every direction.
“‘I’m like, everybody right now, while Justin’s in class, text him at the same time ‘Rebound!!!’ with three exclamation marks,’” Pope said Friday night.
The point got through. McBride, the transfer from James Madison, came off the bench at Rupp Arena and pulled down eight rebounds against his old team as No. 23 Kentucky held off the Dukes, 89-80.
Pope said the staff had been hammering that same theme for months.
“It was like, ‘Hey, this is a place where he has to build his game and grow his game for us to be the team we want to be,’” Pope said. “Our whole team needs him to rebound.”
Kentucky needed plenty more than McBride’s boards to survive a game that got dicey in a hurry. James Madison launched 45 3-pointers and hit 14 of them, tying the most attempts ever against Kentucky and setting a Rupp Arena record for an opponent. That kind of volume put the Wildcats in a real fight, and the bench ended up carrying a huge chunk of the load.
UK’s reserves scored 39 points, with McBride adding 13, freshman guard Mason Williams chipping in 12 and forward Braydon Hawthorne scoring 10. That production mattered because the starters didn’t all deliver their usual punch. Milan Momcilovic went 1 for 8 from deep, Malachi Moreno scored eight points on five field-goal attempts and Ousmane N’Diaye finished with three points on three shots.
“Man, we’re gonna need everybody on the bench from 1 to the last roster spot,” starting point guard Zoom Diallo said. “We’re going to need everybody. So my job is just trying to boost confidence into my teammates.”
Diallo finished with 16 points, matching Alex Wilkins, who also scored 16. But the night may have belonged most to Mason Williams, the under-recruited freshman and son of UK assistant Mo Williams.
Williams was sharp from the start and steady all night. He hit 5 of 8 shots, went 2 for 4 from 3-point range and finished with a game-high five assists without a turnover. In the second half alone, he had seven points and four assists as Kentucky outscored James Madison by 11 while he was on the floor.
He checked in for Diallo with 13:52 left and never came out. Diallo took a shot to the face in the second half, though it wasn’t clear whether that affected the rotation. Afterward, Pope said Diallo was “healthy.”
Still, it was Williams who helped close the door. He was handling the point during an 11-0 Kentucky run that flipped a 56-54 deficit into a 65-56 lead, and James Madison never got closer than five after that. Kentucky eventually stretched the margin to 14.
“Every minute Mase gets, it just accelerates his development,” Pope said. “We’ve talked about it since the beginning.
He’s got a college-ready body. He’s got a college-ready skill set.
It’s just learning what that looks like and feels like.”
Pope added that Williams is “not always going to have to close out games for us,” but said those moments are “just this awesome education for him.”
McBride got his own education in a different way, turning in a second-half burst that changed the feel of the game. He knocked down one of Kentucky’s three 3-pointers during the decisive run and finished the second half with six points and six rebounds, making both of his 3-point tries after halftime.
Kentucky’s bench scored 21 second-half points, while James Madison’s reserves put up 24 for the game. McBride said the Dukes used small, switchable lineups, and Pope matched that look by going small against Preston Spradlin, the former UK staffer who coached McBride at James Madison last season.
“I wish he’d have made more 3s playing for me like he did tonight,” Spradlin said. “I’m so proud of him.
I thought he played really well. I thought defensively he’s really challenged himself.”
Spradlin said he and the JMU staff “spent a lot of time working on with” McBride, and the forward looked comfortable in those small-ball stretches. He spent much of that time alongside Williams and Hawthorne in a lineup McBride called “very fun.”
“Obviously I think it’s wonderful,” McBride said of UK’s options off the bench.
Kentucky got that kind of depth without much from Kam Williams, who was playing in his first game since last March, when the season ended with a loss to Momcilovic and Iowa State. Williams had been working back from a Jones fracture in his foot that cost him 12 games last season.
Pope said he was on a minutes restriction - 12 at most - and Kentucky used him for nine. He finished with two points, a rebound and an assist.
Pope said the game was useful for Williams because Kentucky had to play smaller in stretches and because the contest stayed tight enough for him to log meaningful minutes.
That matters with Tuesday’s Champions Classic matchup against Kansas in Chicago looming. If Kentucky’s early season path is going to keep getting tougher, the Wildcats already showed Friday that the bench can be more than a support system.
“Our bench,” Pope said, “is going to be a massive part of this.”
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