Mark Pope took to the postgame radio show to explain Kentucky Basketball’s ugly 89-69 loss to Kansas, but his primary excuse doesn’t really match the reality of his roster.
Speaking with Tom Leach, Pope called the blowout a “frustrating night” and blamed the team’s offensive rushing and poor defensive responses on inexperience. “They did a nice job; we did a bad job responding to kind of their drop defense… We were so rushed,” Pope said. “This is what happens with a young group.”
Calling this Kentucky
team a “young group” doesn’t make much sense.
The rotation that saw the floor on Tuesday night featured a junior, a sophomore, a senior, a European pro, a seventh-year player, and two other seniors.
The starting five alone consisted of a junior in Zoom Diallo, a sophomore in Alex Wilkins, a senior in Milan Momcilovic, a European pro who is technically a junior in Ousmane N’Diaye, and a sophomore in Malachi Moreno.
Now, freshman Mason Williams is young, but brushing off fundamental breakdowns as mere youth is a tough pill to swallow when a team deploys that much veteran experience.
Kentucky Basketball took drives to nowhere
Pope admitted the team “raced downhill to nothing” and that Kansas “cut us to death.” That was apparently a point of emphasis for Kansas.
Tyran Stokes in the postgame said that Kansas focused heavily on backcuts because they knew a highly aggressive Kentucky defense would overplay them. And they did, but it is frustrating that they never adjusted. It happened the whole game.
But the most concerning tactical failure of the night was the complete inability to utilize Momcilovic.
The Kentucky offense generated just seven shots for a player billed as one of the country’s best shooters. When asked about getting Momcilovic better looks, Pope deflected slightly, pointing to early foul trouble.
“It’s easier to playcall when you have a traditional lineup on the floor,” Pope said. “That’s something that happens as the season progresses. All of your guys start to filter in… On the player side, there’s some responsibility on Milan, some on his teammates… give some credit to Kansas.”
The lack of a “traditional lineup” stemmed from Moreno picking up his second foul with 16:37 left in the first half, followed by N’Diaye picking up two fouls and a technical and hitting the bench less than a minute later. Kam Williams is nowhere near where he will be once he gets back to full health, and you are missing Trent Noah.
But that performance was disheartening even for the most sunny sunshine pumper out there.
Pope admitted that having the starting frontcourt on the bench four minutes into the game complicated things, as most of their practiced actions run through those two bigs.
If the blueprint to shutting down Kentucky’s entire offense, and freezing out an elite shooter like Momcilovic, is simply getting two bigs in foul trouble, Pope and his staff have major schematic issues to fix.
You can’t hide behind the excuse of being young when your roster is full of vets.
The good news is, this is just game 3. There is a long way to go, and Pope believes this team still can be special.
“To become a really good team, which I believe we will, and I know we can, we are going to have to deal with the frustration in a more constructive way.”
That starts Friday night against Northern Arizona.
