Even Trent Noah acknowledged last week that this Kentucky Basketball team is only three weeks into summer practice. There’s still a long way to go for this team to get to where it wants to go this season.
But when asked what he believes this team’s identity is, Noah was adamant that this team is tough, adding that he believes this is a “super tough” team during last week’s media availability. That’s a word you would want any player associated with the team you root for. Toughness may be an overused word in sports. For me, it’s an underused word.
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“I feel like we’re super tough,” he said. “We really shoot the 3 well, and we have a lot of length. I think that helped us on defense. We’re kind of being a little more aggressive this year defensively, and I feel like our length and our size kind of make up for some of the holes that we have.”
Whenever I hear an athlete describe his or her team as tough, that makes me think they can withstand anything and any piece of adversity they may encounter. It also makes me think that they don’t get blown out. How many times has Kentucky been blown out in Mark Pope’s first two seasons? Tough teams are in every game during the season. They don’t get blown out, or at least don’t get blown out more than twice.
This Kentucky team is a mixture of young and veteran players. In this day and age of college basketball, if a team is “tough,” that says, to me at least, that it’s coming together and playing for each other. That’s powerful. Hearing Trent Noah, a third-year player on this team who’s from Kentucky, say that this team is tough is encouraging. Noah himself said that he loves going up against anybody in practice. That’s a competitive mindset.
“There’s zero part of me that’s trying to prove other people wrong,” Noah said. “I wake up every day, and I do it every day to prove the people in my little foxhole right because they believe so much in me.
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“I feel like I’m the most confident I’ve ever been,” Noah added. “That’s just a testament to being older and to my work. In 21 years, I’ve had this dream. So, I feel like I’m super confident and ready to go. (I’m) hungry. I feel like this year, as a team and individually, we’re going to see a breakthrough.”
Players set the standard. Noah is adamant about what this team is just three weeks into summer practice. Toughness matters, and Big Blue Nation will get behind any tough Wildcats’ team.
