Kentucky's 'standard of excellence' helped Cats avoid letdown: "We're kind of just hungry for the next one."

We already know Mark Pope doesn’t believe in trap games, instead focusing on ‘what we do want to have happen’ instead of ‘what we don’t want to have happen.’

“Our guys have received that really well. We did not spend much time on (the possibility of a letdown) at all, and we won’t. That’s not the way we do it,” the Kentucky head coach said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t ever have bad results, it just means that we are going to always focus on what we are trying to do and we are going to try to be laser focused on that.”

Instead of celebrating the Duke win, the Wildcats were preparing for Lipscomb. That led to a 97-68 win for the good guys on Tuesday, paving the path for a 4-0 start to the Coach Pope era.

It’s easy for the man in charge to say the team avoids distractions and takes things one game at a time — that’s what he’s supposed to say. What about the players who actually scroll through social media and see the headlines and talking points, though? How do they keep their eyes on the prize, embracing the competition game by game whether it comes from the SEC, ACC, ASUN or Great Midwest Athletic Conference.

It starts by keeping the celebrations small and the preparation long.

“100 percent,” Koby Brea said of staying focused on the task at hand. “I feel like we probably take a couple of minutes to celebrate a win. Then after that, we’re kind of just hungry for the next one.”

“Every next game is the biggest game of your life,” Lamont Butler added. “I think that’s how we approached it. We really focused on Lipscomb.”

Rather than popping champagne bottles — those legally allowed to partake, of course — the Wildcats hit the film room and dug into the extensive scouting report the coaching staff prepared for them. They had to prepare for Pope’s pop quiz during pregame walkthrough, the head coach going around asking specific questions about the opponent to make sure they’re ready to execute the game plan.

That led to a 97-point offensive effort shooting 54.8 percent from the field and 48.0 percent from three while holding Lipscomb to 68 points on 38.8 percent shooting and 17.2 percent from three. They led by 40 points as a 20.5-point favorite with 3:18 to go — again, against a team projected to win the ASUN and make the NCAA Tournament field.

Talk about acing the test.

“That’s a good team with very dangerous actions that they run,” Butler added. “They’re really good, so we just had to focus on that and play up to our standards, our standard of excellence. We went out there and guarded them pretty good. Offensively, we were able to get good shots. We just went out there and played our game, the results were a big win.”

That’s not an early-season honeymoon period or fools gold to stack up the feel-good wins before the real stuff starts. It’s a long-term expectation that ends with banner No. 9.

“It’s still early, but I think we’re heading in the right direction,” Jaxson Robinson said. “Hopefully we can end it with a championship.”