You want to know how far the respect level for Kentucky Basketball has fallen? A reporter told Mark Pope that a Vanderbilt player, playing for a team that had lost three of its last four games, watched the game film on Kentucky and decided that the Wildcats were soft.
They saw “physicality” as a weakness they could exploit. And then they went out and proved they could.
When Mark Pope was asked about that comment post-game, he didn’t get defensive. He didn’t try to spin it. He admitted it.
“Well, it
was a massive weakness for us tonight for sure,” Pope said. “And it’s, you know, some comes with mentality and commitment. And you know, that’s an area where we’ve struggled a little bit, and we have to continue to develop better answers.”
Mentality and commitment are two things that are non-negotiable. You can miss shots, you can turn it over, you can miss free throws, but you can’t come into a game lacking the desire to compete. Or, I guess, apparently, you can.
21 games in, no identity
Read that again. We are 21 games into the season. We aren’t in November anymore. The calendar is about to flip to February, and the head coach is admitting that “mentality and commitment” are areas where they are still struggling to find answers.
If you don’t have an identity by late January, you don’t have one. And if you are constantly coaching commitment and fight, you can’t do anything else. Because it all starts there. You can have the best game plan in the world, but without a team willing to go fight for it, you can’t succeed.
The comeback crutch
Pope was asked if the team had become too comfortable with being down at halftime, relying on their ability to make second-half runs to bail them out. His answer was a mix of defiance and resignation to the situation.
“We think we can be down at halftime and come back, and we have to do a better job,” Pope said. “Listen, this was a disastrous effort from our team… We’ve done that before. We’ve been here before. We ran our five straight in… So, we know we can do it.”
Coach, with all due respect, I don’t care that you can do it. I care that you keep putting yourselves in a position where you have to do it. You can’t play with fire every night in the SEC and not expect to get burned. Tonight, Vanderbilt didn’t just burn them; they scorched the earth.
And if they play like this again in Arkansas, you better believe they will put the hammer down quickly.
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Drew Holbrook has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time, he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion
