It’s not a fun time to be a Kentucky Basketball fan. It hasn’t been for a while, and after tonight, it doesn’t look like it will be for the foreseeable future.
The loss to Missouri was a bad one, in Quad 3 on the team sheet, one of the three easiest left on the schedule. Barring a turnaround, we’re firmly in “worrying about making the NCAA Tournament” territory, an unbelievable turn of events for a fanbase that was promised a $22 million Ferrari over the summer and is now staring at a clunker that struggles to start and, once it finally gets going, tends to break down.
Tonight, that was up eight with four and a half minutes to go at Rupp Arena. Instead of seeing the Cats pull into the driveway with a desperately needed win, Kentucky fans are looking down the street while the car sputters and shakes, wondering how in the heck we got here.
It probably won’t make you feel much better, but Mark Pope says rant on.
“BBN has the right to do and say and act however they want,” Pope said when asked if he had a message for Kentucky fans after the 73-68 loss, the Cats’ sixth of the season. “They’re the greatest fans in the world, and they should be — I’m sure they’re incredibly, incredibly frustrated and upset. So they get the right to do whatever they want.”
Since the summer, this has been a rollercoaster ride. Kentucky spent more than any other team in the transfer portal, a reported $22 million, on Pope’s second roster. When the Cats ran preseason No. 1 Purdue out of the gym in their first exhibition, it looked like they were worth every cent. From there, red flags began popping up, but each had an excuse. Kentucky was dealing with injuries to two key players, Jaland Lowe and Mo Dioubate. Jayden Quaintance hadn’t played yet. It was unfair to judge them until they were all together.
We thought rock bottom was the 35-point loss to Gonzaga in Nashville, especially when Kentucky strung together wins over Indiana and St. John’s. In the second half against the Red Storm, it looked like the Cats were turning it around with Jaland Lowe and Quaintance finally in the fold, to the point we dutifully accepted a lecture from Rick Pitino about judging Pope and his team prematurely. We tried to write off a lackluster performance vs. Bellarmine as the team looking ahead to Christmas. The 15-point loss to Alabama was embarrassing, but Nate Oats’ team is good, probably one of the best Kentucky will face this season. Surely, Kentucky could take care of business against Missouri at home, right? There had to be a reason the Cats were a 12.5-point favorite.
Add Vegas to the group of fools tonight. The first half of the season showed us that Pope and his staff built a team that isn’t equipped to run Pope’s system. Pope accepted that and has tried to pivot to smashmouth basketball. At times, like in the second half vs. St. John’s in Atlanta, it’s worked. Since then, it mostly has not. A lot of that, like in the final four and a half minutes vs. Missouri, is due to poor execution. Kentucky blew an 8-point lead in stunning fashion, one mistake after the other, right down to the broken final play, an off-balance Jaland Lowe three with five seconds to go.
It probably won’t make you feel much better, but Mark Pope says rant on.
“BBN has the right to do and say and act however they want,” Pope said when asked if he had a message for Kentucky fans after the 73-68 loss, the Cats’ sixth of the season. “They’re the greatest fans in the world, and they should be — I’m sure they’re incredibly, incredibly frustrated and upset. So they get the right to do whatever they want.”
Since the summer, this has been a rollercoaster ride. Kentucky spent more than any other team in the transfer portal, a reported $22 million, on Pope’s second roster. When the Cats ran preseason No. 1 Purdue out of the gym in their first exhibition, it looked like they were worth every cent. From there, red flags began popping up, but each had an excuse. Kentucky was dealing with injuries to two key players, Jaland Lowe and Mo Dioubate. Jayden Quaintance hadn’t played yet. It was unfair to judge them until they were all together.
We thought rock bottom was the 35-point loss to Gonzaga in Nashville, especially when Kentucky strung together wins over Indiana and St. John’s. In the second half against the Red Storm, it looked like the Cats were turning it around with Jaland Lowe and Quaintance finally in the fold, to the point we dutifully accepted a lecture from Rick Pitino about judging Pope and his team prematurely. We tried to write off a lackluster performance vs. Bellarmine as the team looking ahead to Christmas. The 15-point loss to Alabama was embarrassing, but Nate Oats’ team is good, probably one of the best Kentucky will face this season. Surely, Kentucky could take care of business against Missouri at home, right? There had to be a reason the Cats were a 12.5-point favorite.
Add Vegas to the group of fools tonight. The first half of the season showed us that Pope and his staff built a team that isn’t equipped to run Pope’s system. Pope accepted that and has tried to pivot to smashmouth basketball. At times, like in the second half vs. St. John’s in Atlanta, it’s worked. Since then, it mostly has not. A lot of that, like in the final four and a half minutes vs. Missouri, is due to poor execution. Kentucky blew an 8-point lead in stunning fashion, one mistake after the other, right down to the broken final play, an off-balance Jaland Lowe three with five seconds to go.
Pope has not taken losses well this season, but to his credit, he handled tonight’s postgame press conference and conversation with Tom Leach as best he could, answering each question calmly and in detail without being short or slipping into superlatives. As a result, we got some of his most candid answers about this group yet.
“We are playing a little bit bigger,” Pope said of Kentucky’s lack of pace. “You know, we are working hard to really just simplify everything, just so, so simple. It’s a work in progress, and it is frustratingly slow. It is just so frustratingly slow. Getting our group to believe in what we do and actually execute what we do, and then execute when the lights are on has been incredibly challenging so far.”
He came back to pace again later. Kentucky was great in transition, with 24 fastbreak points to Missouri’s seven. But when the Tigers made it a halfcourt game? Oh boy.
“Our pace in the halfcourt stinks all the time. And part of it is the personnel that we are playing with. Part of it is that the guys may be overthinking. Give some credit to the defense, also, for sure. Our pace in the half-court has been like the manifestation, the DNA of who we are on my teams. It is incredibly frustrating that we are not finding that right now. That is why we are trying to simplify everything and dumb it down, dumb it down so it’s incredibly simple, so we can just at least execute with some pace and some decision-making. But we are not there yet, clearly.”
Clearly. And with a Quad 3 loss now on the resume and 16 games still to play, 11 in Quad 1, things aren’t looking great. As fans, it’s very hard to continue to have faith in a team that is still having these breakdowns and issues halfway through the season. Although the TV cameras once again captured the players chirping at each other during the game, Pope insists his team won’t give up.
“It’s a hard space. This is tough; it is not the way we intended to start SEC. But it is exactly what we have in our hands right now. When you go through hard times, which everybody does, the question is, how much does it take to break you? And I’m not about to break, this group is not about to break, and we are no place there.
“The only thing you can do is grieve as quickly as possible and move on to the next incredibly challenging game, which we have on Saturday, with the effort of trying to get better. These guys will.”
Hopefully, he’s right. Or a lot of the fanbase may tune out completely.
