Kentucky was excellent against KWC, but Mark Pope saw one area that needs improving

It’s tough to nitpick a 71-point exhibition win. It’s tougher when Kentucky looked as good as it did on both ends of the floor. 123 points on offense behind excellent ball movement and tons of three-pointers complemented by 52 points given up on defense and 18 turnovers forced.

But there’s no such thing as perfection in this beautiful game of basketball.

At SEC Media Days in Birmingham last week, new Kentucky head coach Mark Pope explained that he wanted to see his debut roster get exposed early on. As a matter of fact, he was hoping for it. Up until Wednesday night, Kentucky had only played against… well, Kentucky. It’s tough to truly learn about a team and what their identity is until they face someone other than themselves.

And even though the opposition was also named Kentucky (just with Wesleyan College attached at the end) and in an exhibition setting, Pope got his wish. There was one particular area he noticed that will need improving moving forward.

“I felt like we were dialed in for most of the game. We had a couple of little spaces where we kind of lost ourselves,” Pope said postgame. “We were exposed on the glass a little bit with a team that really shoots a lot of balls and they end up being long rebounds and so we were exposed there a little bit where we can individually and collectively, where we can see that on film.”

On paper, Kentucky won the rebounding battle 43-31 — a pretty decent margin on the glass and one that typically increases the odds of winning by a good amount. But Kentucky Wesleyan won the offensive rebounding battle despite being undersized, pulling in 10 compared to the Wildcats’ nine. Several of those second-chance opportunities, as Pope mentioned, came as a result of long missed shots.

It only resulted in nine extra points against the Panthers, but against a more talented opponent, it would surely be far more.

The way Pope runs his offense, Kentucky likely isn’t going to be a high-level offensive rebounding squad. The goal is to play fast and get up as many shots as possible from deep. But on the other end, closing defensive possessions with rebounds will be key to kickstarting transition scores, which is where the Wildcats thrived with 39 fastbreak points.

“I think we can also learn from things we did well,” Pope added.

This won’t be the last time Kentucky gets exposed, even if it wasn’t all that noticeable. Every single team in the entire country is going to get exposed on a nightly basis. How much a coach can minimize the exposure will define how good their teams are. Pope wants to identify as many cracks as he can, as early as he can.

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