Kentucky responded to Mark Pope's rebounding challenge vs. Bucknell

Aside from winning, Mark Pope had one big objective heading into today’s game vs. Bucknell: owning the offensive boards. Kentucky only had seven offensive rebounds to Wright State’s eleven in the season-opener, which prompted Pope to challenge his team to be stronger on the glass in game two.

They responded. Kentucky won the rebounding battle 57-35, 22-12 on the offensive end. It was clear the message was received early on, as the Cats were physical from the start, totaling 12 offensive rebounds in the first half to Bucknell’s two. Although today’s 100-72 victory over the Bison wasn’t perfect, Pope was pleased with his players’ work on the boards.

“It’s a gift as a coach to have guys that are curious and guys that are humble and guys that want to get better. We don’t use the word curious very often, and we don’t talk about humility very often, but we have a ton of that on our team, and for these guys to respond to a challenge, we’ve been kind of sitting on this for maybe 10 days, like, ah, we’re just not getting where we need to get on the glass, and for these guys to come and almost put up 60 rebounds today is incredibly gratifying as a coach. It’s a really important step for us as a team.”

Pope has a loftier goal for his squad: 100 rebounds in a game.

“We’re trying to get to 100. Has there ever been a game with 100 rebounds?”

He said it as a joke, but of course, someone in the media room knew that the Cats once met that mark, back in 1964 vs. Ole Miss.

“Is that true? 100 rebounds? Oh, man, I thought it was. I’m usually really good at being hyperbolic, but apparently, I wasn’t even close. Well, I was kind of being sarcastic about the 100. But maybe that needs to be our goal, and nonetheless, I’m really proud of our guys, man.”

Kentucky had two offensive boards on the first possession alone off missed jumpers. Pope was so happy to see the hustle on the glass that he excused the missed shots.

“The very first possession, we missed two jumpers in a row, got two offensive rebounds. And just as twisted as I am, I was almost like, ‘Yes, we missed!’ because it gave us an opportunity to kind of set that marker from the beginning. I thought our guys were really good throughout the game, being super aggressive. You think about our fours and fives, we have four guys that are playing the bulk of the minutes of the four and the five, and they all had three or more offensive rebounds, and that’s pretty cool. Really, really, tremendous effort by those guys.”

It was a balanced effort. Amari Williams was the only Cat to finish with 10+ rebounds, with 14, five on the offensive glass. All but one Wildcat pulled down a board today, the lone exception being Travis Perry, who played only three minutes.

Thanks to Tom Leach, we learned a little more about that game in 1964 when Kentucky pulled down 108 rebounds vs. the Ole Miss Rebels. The Cats had 125 field goal attempts and Ole Miss was 24-84.

“That was not a good shooting Old Miss team apparently at the time,” Pope quipped on radio. “But I’m really proud of the guys, man. It’s awesome to have these guys come in here and be that focused on the glass on both sides of the ball.”

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