For most of this season, Mark Pope has leaned hard into the numbers. Lineup data, substitution patterns, analytics-driven decisions, even when the eye test and fan base hated it, he stuck to the spreadsheet.
Against Indiana, something changed.
Down seven at the half and staring at another brutal night, Pope quietly broke his own pattern. The second half belonged to a much tighter rotation, and that group responded by outscoring Indiana 40–21 and turning a slog into Kentucky basketball’s most important
win of the year so far.
How a tighter second-half rotation helped Kentucky flip Indiana game
Here’s how the second-half minutes shook out:
- Otega Oweh: 19:41
- Mouhamed Dioubate: 13:12
- Jaland Lowe: 14:44
- Kam Williams: 14:49
- Brandon Garrison: 13:13
- Denzel Aberdeen: 9:44
- Malachi Moreno: 6:47
- Collin Chandler: 4:06
- Trent Noah: 3:44
That’s it. No 11- or 12-man shuffle, no endless combinations. Pope rode the guys who were bringing force, defense, and rebounding, and trusted them to live with the results.
The impact was obvious:
- Kentucky held Indiana to 21 points after the break.
- The Wildcats dominated the glass, pulling down 14 offensive rebounds for the game.
- They turned the Hoosiers over 18 times and cashed those into crucial points.
It suddenly looked less like an experiment and more like a team discovering a backbone.
From theory to feel
Kentucky’s analytic profile has always looked better than its record. Even at 7–4, the Wildcats sat in the KenPom top 20 because of efficiency metrics, point differential, and shooting profiles.
That has been Pope’s argument: the process is sound, the results will come.
Saturday’s second half felt different. It was less about process purity and more about feel, who was competing, who was rebounding, who was willing to make it ugly.
Oweh stayed on the floor because he was a menace at the point of attack and on the glass. Dioubate stayed because he turned the game into a wrestling match in the paint. Lowe stayed because he changed the tempo and gave Kentucky a downhill threat they’ve been missing. Garrison stayed because he anchored the rim and finished plays inside.
It wasn’t a democracy. It was survival.
When asked why Andrija Jelavic didn’t get in, Pope leaned into the ‘we do what we need to do to win’ mentality:
A preview of rotations to come?
The obvious question: Is this the new normal?
Pope didn’t promise permanent changes, but the second half against Indiana will be hard to ignore in future game plans. As the roster gets healthier and more bodies become available, the temptation to lean on 10–12 guys will always be there.
But Saturday provided a clear data point: when Pope tightened the screws, his team got tougher, more connected, and more effective.
If Kentucky’s season turns around from here, the pivot point may very well be the night the numbers coach trusted his gut, shrunk the rotation, and watched a smaller circle of Wildcats punch way above their recent weight.
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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
