Lance Ware with teammate Isaiah Jackson. (SEC Photo)
With a 5-10 record and only nine games left in the regular season, freshman Lance Ware insists Kentucky cannot change its original goals.
“I mean your goal should never change whether you win or you lose. They’re goals for a reason, so if you just keep on changing them, it’s never a goal,” Ware said Tuesday. “The same goals that we had set on day one are the same goals that we’re still looking forward to having now.”
Kentucky plays at Missouri tonight in a game it must win to keep any hope of an NCAA at-large bid alive. But Ware believes it is “absolutely” realistic to think the Cats can win the rest of their games.
“I know that our team thinks we can win the rest of the games. I mean, we believe in each other, so honestly, that’s what it is about,” Ware said. “We believe in each other. I know our coaching staff believes in us. So, we all believe we can win the rest of these games.”
Kentucky fans have mainly written off making the NCAA Tournament this year. Ware and his teammates have not. He says it is “obviously super important” to make the NCAA.
“Every team obviously wants to play in March and get to the tournament. That’s kind of the goal. That’s been the goal since the beginning of the season,” Ware said. “That’s one of the goals that we still have and we still believe that we can make. We’ve just got to turn things up.”
Ware does understand there is “not too much room” for error left for UK, which had last Saturday’s game with Texas canceled because of COVID protocols.
“We’re not going to be panicking and just, ‘Oh, we have to do this. We have to do that. We have to do this.’ Obviously still playing within the system and still playing calm, and giving ourselves the best ability to win,” he said.
Ware and other players were able to get in the gym some while UK was on pause due to COVID and do individual workouts.
“We all took the time off and kind of used it as a refresh and, you know, got our minds right. It gave us some time even though we were still working out. It wasn’t practice. It wasn’t a two-hour-long practice. So, we kind of like got to decompress and just kind of refocus on the main goal and what we need to do to play and obviously win games,” he said.
Maybe in a strange way, the COVID pause was a break from practice and criticism the team has been getting. Perhaps that can help recharge the team in a strange way.
“If anybody just gets a few days off to just, you know, relax it’s helpful. We had two days, I think. It helped. Guys came into practice yesterday, energetic, fresh, bouncing, and just happy,” Ware said Tuesday. “When you take something away that we’re used to I was like, ‘Wow, we don’t have any practice today. I’m so used to practicing.’ So it gave us kind of like an excitement to get back out on the court.”
