There's about a half hour until tip off at Reparina and noise is building outside of the Kentucky locker room.

Inside it's quiet as the team gathers for its prayer circle.

Jackson Robinson and Mark Pope line up next to each other as they have for 60 plus games.

As they link hands, unexpected emotions interrupt Pope's usual pregame flow.

And so it just hit me a few games ago.

I was like, oh my gosh.

Like I've been standing next to Jacks for a good two and a half years now.

And at some point after the season, like, I'm not going to be able to do that anymore.

The moment stuck with Pope well after the buzzer sounded on a November non-conference win. He brought it up with Jackson a few days later. Like he was talking about

how he just doesn't know what he's going to do when I'm gone. So that that hit me a little bit. I don't know.

It's just really cool knowing that I have a coach that I have that relationship with. That's something

that I was looking for when I was younger.

Without it, Jackson would not be in Lexington.

He might not be playing basketball at all.

Jackson Robinson doesn't remember a time in his life without basketball.

That's because he was born into it.

Jackson's mother, aunt, and grandmother were all Americans.

Jackson's grandmother, Nancy Robinson, was a star at Murray State College in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

Although she was responsible for scoring, Nancy had the heart of a defender, a feistiness she passed on to her daughters in Jackson.

Really hard work and effort. So she's a scrappy player. Everyone said, I mean, tough defender,

hard nose, just get in there, you know, work hard. And that's the thing for him. She always is

like pushing him to, you know, do the dirty work. She was a dirty work player.

...