Cason Wallace becoming a leader for this Kentucky basketball team. ‘His voice is needed.’

During the Kentucky basketball “Pro Day” event back in the fall — weeks before a single game was played — the Wildcats were still getting to know each other and some outside observers packed into the team’s practice facility for their first look at the new squad.

There was a moment in one of that night’s scrimmages that was easy to overlook in October but stands out as March approaches. Amid the cacophony of players yelling instructions, sneakers squeaking and NBA scouts chatting at courtside, a loud, commanding voice rose above the din. If you weren’t already looking in the direction from where that voice came, your eyes surely shot there upon hearing it.

The source of the sound: an 18-year-old freshman surrounded by seasoned college basketball veterans.

Cason Wallace arrived at Kentucky last summer with the same five-star credentials and NBA lottery pick projections as the many blue-chip backcourt prospects who preceded him during John Calipari’s 14-years-and-counting tenure in charge of UK’s one-and-done recruiting machine. But no incoming UK player with Wallace’s rep had walked into a situation quite like this one.

The Texas native joined a roster packed with veterans. The group featured five senior scholarship players, unprecedented in the Calipari era. It also included reigning national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe, two-time reigning conference assist king Sahvir Wheeler, and four other scholarship Wildcats who had spent at least one season in the UK coach’s system.

So, highly touted as Wallace was, it wasn’t exactly a situation in which he could assert an immediate leadership role.

Wheeler was the team’s starting point guard and others had either already established themselves as leaders within the program or were coming into this season with an intent to do so.

But that moment in the preseason — when Wallace shouted loudly over everyone else — showed there was a commanding presence in there somewhere. It just needed time to come out.

“Early on in the season, he wouldn’t say a lot. He would just listen. Like good leaders do,” UK associate coach Orlando Antigua said. “And as he’s gotten more comfortable, in terms of his own role on the team, being able to communicate and talk with his teammates and share his leadership has been something that this team has needed. And he’s stepping up, and he’s maturing. And that’s part of his growth.”

During that Pro Day moment, Wallace was running his own team as the point guard, with Wheeler as his counterpart on the other squad. For most of the UK practices that followed, the two would serve on the same team, Wheeler often running the show. That’s how the dynamic worked in games, too.

But when UK’s veteran point guard was sidelined for the team’s trip to Tennessee last month, Wallace assumed the starting playmaker role. And he’s held onto it ever since. With that game-day switch, Wallace, who turned 19 on the day of UK’s season opener, has also emerged as one of this team’s biggest voices.

“He’s starting to take on some leadership responsibility,” Calipari said after that Tennessee game. “He’s starting to talk, and he’s not afraid to speak up. Where (before) he stayed back and listened … now, it’s like, ‘OK, I’m gonna take some of this on.’ So it’s pretty good.”

In the nine games Kentucky has played since that win over Tennessee, Wallace has scored in double figures in seven of them. In the only two games that he didn’t, the freshman tallied a total of 17 assists to just two turnovers. In the Cats’ possibly season-turning week that featured wins over Mississippi State and Tennessee — with Wheeler sidelined due to injury — he played all but two minutes and eight seconds of the possible 80 minutes.

“I think he’s done great running the show, playing a lot more minutes,” fellow freshman Chris Livingston said. “And he’s still been really good and sound on defense, even though he’s probably a lot more tired being that he’s getting hounded by the other team’s point guard every possession.”

Wallace leads the Cats with 1.9 steals per game. The 6-foot-4 guard has blocked 10 shots in the past nine games, the most of any UK player (by a good margin) over that span. Even when he’s not shooting well, he’s finding other ways to impact the game, and Wallace is managing to play nearly all of the team’s point guard minutes while battling through injuries and limiting mistakes.

Perhaps his most important contribution during UK’s recent resurgence has been that leadership.

‘He has grown’

When Wallace first committed to Kentucky before his senior season of high school, his coach, Kevin Lawson, said that the young guard arrived at Richardson High in basically the same spot he’d find four years later in college. Wallace might have been the most talented player with the biggest upside as a freshman, but his high school team was already loaded with older guys.

“He was very good at not rubbing people the wrong way,” Lawson said.

By the time Wallace was an upperclassman, he was “the alpha dog” on the court, according to Lawson, unafraid to speak up and tell teammates what they needed to be doing.

Calipari and Kentucky fans won’t get to witness such a years-long transformation up close. Wallace will surely be off to the NBA Draft as a high pick after this season is finished. But those who have been paying close attention have seen a similar emergence over the past couple of months.

“He’s been more vocal,” senior Antonio Reeves said. “… I definitely can tell — his leadership is definitely showing.”

“He’s taken on that leadership role,” senior Jacob Toppin said. “And I like that for him, because he can be a leader for this team.”

Wallace said recently that he realized earlier in the season that he wanted to step up as a leader and that his coaches were even prodding him to do so. “I wasn’t shying away from it. It’s something that I said I wanted to do before I got here.”

But saying and doing are two different things, and it’s not easy for a newcomer to command that reverence of 22- and 23-year-olds right off the bat, even if they respect his game.

“Yeah, it was pretty difficult,” Wallace said. “Because, you know, you don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. You don’t want to come off the wrong way. So I feel like — as I got to know them better and understood who they were as people — it became easier.”

In most places, this is the natural order of things. At Kentucky, it hasn’t quite been the norm, with earlier Calipari-era point guards including John Wall, Brandon Knight and De’Aaron Fox held up as the one-and-done standards.

“That’s what’s supposed to happen with these kids over the season,” Calipari said of Wallace’s emergence. “They’re supposed to grow as players, grow as people. And he has grown.”

With Wheeler’s status uncertain, this has turned into Wallace’s team down the stretch. It might have taken him a while to figure out his place and discover his voice, but he’s found it now.

“That’s normal for freshmen,” Antigua said. “And particularly when you have a lot of upperclassmen, which we do. But his voice is needed, as well. And it’s impactful and important.”

Wednesday

Kentucky at Florida

When: 7 p.m.

TV: ESPN

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Kentucky 18-9 (9-5 SEC), Florida 14-13 (7-7)

Series: Kentucky leads 108-41

Last meeting: Kentucky won 72-67 on Feb. 4 in Lexington

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