Ulis-Booker friendship thriving in Lexington

By LARRY VAUGHT



When they were eighth-grade players at the Elite 100 camp in St. Louis, Kentucky freshman guards Tyler Ulis and Devin Booker were on the same team and that started a friendship that helped bring them to UK where they are playing key roles for No. 1 Kentucky.

“I just enjoyed playing with him. It was a long shot then (going to school together). I didn’t think it was going to happen, I just really liked playing with him,” said Booker. “Then when ended up being on the same team again at another camp, and then another camp, so from there I was like ‘wow.’ I really, really wanted to play with him, but we didn’t have the same schools then.

“Then Kentucky and Michigan State were the two schools really recruiting us hard. We talked to each other each and every day, our fathers spoke to each other, our families both talked and we came up with this as the best decision for us.”

Ulis agreed.

“Once we started talking more and exchanged numbers we just became really cool and decided we’d come to school together,” Ulis said. “We talked about playing together once we talked about and understood what we were going to do. We didn’t really talk about it (playing together), but we talked every day though, just about life outside of basketball. We just clicked and became best friends.”

That friendship has helped them both this year.

“Coming to school, first, it made it a lot easier, just someone there that you’ve been friends with for a while so you can relate. We had to adjust to new things together, so I think it brought our brotherhood together even closer than it was,” Booker said. “He’s just a special person to be around.”

Booker said the Ulis that is playing now at UK is not that different from the Ulis he first met at the Elite 100 camp.

“He was still smaller than everybody, but he made the game easier for me, and that’s why I loved him. He always found me. I always ran the floor and he’d kick it ahead for me. We just really took over competition, us two together, and he was fun to play with,” Booker said. “I got a lot of open looks because of him. He was a warrior like he is now. He used to always get hit by screens, obviously, because he’s little, but he’d get back up and play hard.”

Ulis feels the same about Booker.

“He could score. I could pass the ball and get assists, I think I led the camp in assists and it was because of him getting buckets just like he does now,” Ulis said.