It’s not often you find a three-time conference All-Defensive Team member and two-time conference Defensive Player of the Year who can also drop a hit single — the anthem of Kentucky basketball to open Mark Pope‘s time in Lexington. I mean, you can’t start a song saying “Time to run it back one more time I want some better rings” and then end it with “No. 9 on the way” and not get Big Blue Nation bought in.

Lamont Butler released “Wildcats” and immediately followed that up with an 11-point, six-rebound, six-assist, six-steal, two-block effort in his first exhibition game at Kentucky. He may not have led the team in scoring, but his all-around impact was the talk of the program in the aftermath.

“He’s a dangerous man. If you see Lamont in the back corner, guard your wallet man because this dude is about to steal everything! I’m kidding,” Pope joked after the 123-52 win over Kentucky Wesleyan. “He’s actually the best human being in the world. But on the court, he’s a world-class thief.”

Pope raved about his on-court and in-studio performances in the same breath before sliding one additional footnote in there as if no one would notice.

“He’s a — I don’t know if he’s at the top of the Billboard (charts) yet as a musical artist, but at least he’s in the game right now,” the Kentucky head coach said. “He could do a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute. I mean, this guy can do everything, and it’s fun to coach him. I’m excited for BBN to get to know him better and better and better.”

Wait, what? He could do a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute? Are we just going to casually throw that in and not expect questions?

Checking Butler’s bio with UK Athletics, his ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube is, in fact, listed — I must have missed it focusing on his love for SpongeBob SquarePants and choosing teleportation as a superpower. There is a lot to unpack there. As for his interest in that six-sided cube with 54-squares of white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow, that started back in high school when his inner competitor kicked in for no reason whatsoever beyond proving to himself he could do it.

Now, he can proudly say he can solve one in a matter of seconds.

“My fastest is 44 seconds,” he told KSR when previewing Kentucky’s second exhibition matchup vs. Minnesota State. “I learned it in high school. My senior year of high school, I had a teammate who kept bringing one in. I was just like, ‘I’m gonna solve it one day.’ It took me like three weeks to solve it.”

Once he started, he couldn’t stop. His desire to solve a Rubik’s Cube turned into a desire to master it. Now he just does it for fun.

“That made me fall in love with it and I kept doing it. I got faster and faster with it as time went on,” he added. “I just can’t keep doing it under a minute all the time. I’ll just do it sometimes, but I can still do it pretty fast.”

You learn something new every day. Anything else we need to know about Butler before the season starts — beyond his status as one of the top point guards in college basketball obviously?

The fifth-year senior has one other hidden talent you may not know about him.

“I don’t know, I just do stuff. I like puzzles, I’ll say that,” Butler told KSR. “I don’t have a record time with that, but I like word puzzles and word games, stuff like that.”

Pope wasn’t lying when he said he was “excited for BBN to get to know him better and better and better.” It’s hard not to when you’ve got someone as fascinating as Lamont Butler on your squad.