The Kentucky Wildcats have a roster loaded with transfer portal players and a few incoming freshmen. It is different than the roster compilation this team has had over the past decade, but it’s one that should bode well for former BYU head coach Mark Pope.

Pope, who has been quoted saying he has added each player with a purpose, will have big shoes to fill with John Calipari now in Fayetteville. Pope immediately got to work upon being hired, adding numerous players from the transfer portal.

With the summer workouts having kicked off, we’re starting to hear from many of them.

Fairleigh Dickinson forward Ansley Almonor has been hearing and seeing Kentucky not being in many top-25 rankings. After a few practices, he has let people know of the high expectations this team has internally and that they plan to “shock a lot of people.”

“I feel like we’re going to go out there and shock a lot of people in the country,” Almonor said in a recent interview with local media. “People are underestimating us, I feel like. We have a really, really good team and a really experienced team. It’s going to be fun to watch us, for sure.

Almonor’s comments about being an underdog have been commonplace at the Joe Craft Center, as Andrew Carr believes Kentucky will surprise people with how good they are on the defensive end.

”I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people defensively,” Carr said.

A big part of that in summer practices has been how well this veteran team communicates on the defensive end, something that’s been quite problematic with Kentucky in recent years.

”Transition defense will be big for us, and that comes with communication. It’s been really cool to see not only one or two people talking, and things like that, it’s really been the whole team trying to take that next step communication-wise,” said Carr.

It also helps that Kentucky has two legitimate rim protectors in Amari Williams and Brandon Garrison.

”(Amari) has done a special job, he and BG (Brandon Garrison),” Carr said. “That center spot holds together the defensive unit and most of the time is able to see everything, has to have a very loud voice, and they’ve done a really good job kind of growing and trying to make a concerted effort to be as loud as possible.”

It also helps that Kentucky has legitimate depth at all five spots.

“I think a lot of people have done a really great job (in practice),” said Carr. “For us, it’s been really cool because it’s not just one person every day. It switches every single day. Different people have good days on different days. That’s what I’m super excited about with this team in general, the depth. We’ve got two of everything. So it’s been really fun to see that throughout practice.”

Next season can’t get here fast enough.

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(CNN) — A jury awarded $2 million to the estate of a man who died months after being “scalded and severely burned” by water from a shower in his Kentucky motel room, according to a lawsuit.

Alex Chronis, then 76 years old, sustained third-degree burns on his body at the Econo Lodge in Erlanger, Kentucky, which ultimately resulted in his “untimely and wrongful death,” on June 19, 2022. according to the complaint filed by Chronis’ niece.

On November 19, 2021, Chronis attempted to take a shower but was “almost immediately bombarded with scalding hot water which knocked him to the floor of the shower tub where the water continued to scald him,” the complaint states.

Two associates of Chronis rushed to his aid after hearing his fall and screams, according to the complaint.

The shower delivered water at an “extremely excessive temperature,” the complaint stated. The temperature was more than 150 degrees, according to Chronis’ family attorney, N. Jeffrey Blankenship. Most adults will suffer third-degree burns if exposed to 150-degree water for two seconds, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Chronis, a food vendor visiting the Cincinnati region for work, initially used nonprescription medicine for his burns before working at a local festival, according to Blankenship. He went to a nearby hospital but left to return to work, Blankenship added.

Two days later, Chronis returned to the hospital for skin graft surgery and remained hospitalized for nearly five months, according to the complaint.

In April 2022, Chronis was transferred to a rehabilitation facility in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, Blankenship said. He spent months in the hospital after the incident, underwent numerous medical procedures, and endured “substantial conscious pain and suffering” before ultimately dying from his injuries on June 19, 2022, according to the complaint.

The jury found the motel owner, Sanjay Patel, “failed to exercise ordinary care in inspecting and maintaining their hotel rooms in a reasonably safe condition for the use of their guests,” according to the trial order and judgment.

According to the Kentucky Secretary of State’s website, Patel owns Aspyn, LLC, which operates the Econo Lodge in Erlanger, which was also named as a defendant in the suit.

The judgment, filed on July 3, awarded Chronis’ estate nearly $1.3 million to cover medical expenses, $250,000 for pain and suffering, more than $16,000 for funeral costs, and $500,000 in punitive damages.

CNN has reached out to Patel’s attorney, Lindsay Rump, for comment.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT)—A worldwide technology outage impacted healthcare entities across the nation Friday. Several of our hospitals and clinics in the Commonwealth were no exception.

One of those directly affected is UK HealthCare.

“We have a team that is used to handling things like this, so we got a call around 2:00 a.m.,” said Dr. Mark Hoffman, UK HealthCare’s Chief Medical Officer. “Incident command was set up, and that’s when the problem was first identified, and we all came in and got to work.”

Hoffman says the outage is primarily impacting providers’ workstations, where they document information or make orders.

“That system, for the most part, with limited disruption, was usable through most of this, but the number of workstations we were able to use was decreased by the outage,” he said.

With fewer workstations, hospital staff have had to cancel elective procedures and prioritize certain departments, such as the ICU and labor and delivery.

“We have to be thoughtful in our decision-making and how we plan for things like this. This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with something like this. We do drills and we have systems built to prepare us for when these things happen,” Hoffman added.

In addition to UK Healthcare, other local hospitals, including Baptist Health and CHI St. Joseph Health, are making statements about this outage:

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