As the Kentucky men’s basketball team prepares for its first-round game against Troy on Friday in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, one of the topics of discussion is the Cats’ wealth of experience. Despite playing in a large number of college games, the UK roster does not have a ton of experience in the Big Dance.

Lamont Butler has, by far, the most postseason experience on the UK roster. Butler has played in 11 NCAA Tournament games, including the 2023 title game. Ansley Almonor has played in three tournament games and Koby Brea has participated in two. Andrew Carr and Amari Williams have each played in one NCAA Tournament game.

UK head coach Mark Pope believes that experience overall can be just as important as NCAA Tournament experience, and he likes how many collegiate games his roster has participated in.

“I think the beautiful thing about experience is — the one thing about experience is this game can throw so many different things at you. And so the more experience you have, the more you experience, the more memories you have to call back on and be, like, okay, I’ve been here before,” Pope said. “I’ve seen the scheme before. I’ve executed in this situation before. I’ve felt these emotions before. And so the more familiar experiences can be, that’s certainly a bonus. I think our guys have a lot of that.”

Pope says that having experience is important, but perhaps not as important as some people may think.

“I don’t know if there’s that much of a difference. We probably make more of it than it is,” Pope said. “I say that sincerely. We’ll approach this game against Troy like we’ve approached every single game all season long with the same words, same intensity, same vocabulary, same urgency. We kind of max out the prep and intensity of every game, and so we’ll do it the same here.”

Butler clearly has the most experience in the tournament on the UK roster and he was asked what advice he would give to his teammates.

“Just have fun with it. It’s a blessing just to be on this stage, to have this opportunity. So really just have fun and play free,” Butler said. “Everybody has dreamed of this moment, and to seize this moment, we’ve got to be ourselves, do what we’ve been doing this whole year to get here, and do it at a high rate. We need everybody to be special in their roles and I think it’s going to be a successful year for us.”

The Cats hope that their experience will pay off on Friday in the first-round matchup against Troy in Milwaukee.