KSR Today: Mark Pope's bye week thoughts and Ohio State's national title

Good morning, folks! The Ohio State Buckeyes are your College Football Playoff champion — the first-ever in the newly expanded 12-team field.

OSU captured the program’s seventh national championship on Monday night and first since 2014 with a 34-23 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. A dime of a pass from Will Howard to freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith in the closing minutes shut down Notre Dame’s final comeback attempt. The Irish actually struck first in this one by soaking up nearly 10 minutes for an opening-drive touchdown. But then Ohio State took control, scoring 31 straight points. Notre Dame did its best to make it close down the stretch, but it was too little, too late.

Ryan Day, your job is safe for another day — unless you want to try your hand at the NFL. I’m sure this victory will only make Kentucky’s recruiting efforts in the state of Ohio easier… Let’s go ahead and dive into the rest of this morning’s news and notes.

Pope’s bye week radio show

Kentucky is off from playing games this week. The Wildcats will go a full week from last Saturday’s loss to Alabama to this coming Saturday’s road matchup with Vanderbilt. Head coach Mark Pope is using this opportunity to A) get his team as healthy as possible, and B) to figure out any minor ways he can make impactful changes moving forward. Judging by his postgame press conference after the Alabama defeat, he was not a happy camper with how that game played out. That’s what we want to see. He talked about points A and B more in-depth on his weekly radio show last night.

“I try not to be negative, but we did lose that game,” Pope said. “A lot of good — there were some things that were really spectacular.”

Pope pointed towards Alabama’s 15 offensive rebounds as a major point of emphasis. Continuing to learn how the referees officiate games is another area he and his staff are closely monitoring. We also learned he used to listen to Kenny G before games when he was a player. If you missed Coach’s show last night, we’ve got you covered with the links below.

• Mark Pope provides new injury update on Kerr Kriisa
• Mark Pope’s favorite part about being at Kentucky? “The people I get to be around.”
• Kentucky finds breakthrough following ‘sweeping review’ of SEC officiating
• Andrew Carr is ‘gutting it out’ with back injury, but Mark Pope is ‘hopeful’ new treatment will get him back to 100%

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Kentucky MBB and WBB in the updated polls

Kentucky is the only school in the country with its men’s and women’s basketball teams ranked among the nation’s Top 11 in the AP Poll. Is that somewhat of a cherry-picked stat? Yes. Do we care? Absolutely not. The Kentucky men (14-4; 3-2 SEC) slid down one spot to No. 9 in the latest AP Poll while the women (16-1; 5-0 SEC) jumped up one spot to No. 11.

AP MBB Poll – Jan. 20

RK	TEAM	REC	PTS	TREND
1	Auburn (62)	17-1	1550	–
2	Duke	16-2	1485	+1
3	Iowa State	15-2	1397	-1
4	Alabama	15-3	1338	–
5	Florida	16-2	1262	–
6	Tennessee	16-2	1151	–
7	Houston	14-3	1109	+3
8	Michigan State	16-2	10	+4
9	Kentucky	14-4	983	-1
10	Marquette	15-3	935	-3
11	Purdue	15-4	883	+6
12	Kansas	13-4	797	-3
13	Texas A&M	14-4	781	-2
14	Mississippi State	15-3	665	+1
15	Oregon	15-3	624	-2
16	Ole Miss	15-3	569	+5
17	Illinois	13-5	553	+2
18	Wisconsin	15-3	511	+6
19	UConn	13-5	496	-5
20	St. John’s	16-3	418	–
21	Michigan	14-4	351	-1
22	Missouri	15-3	250	–
23	West Virginia	13-4	221	–
24	Memphis	14-4	132	-6
25	Louisville	14-5	119	–

Here is how a handful of national media ranked Kentucky MBB as of yesterday morning:

• Jon Rothstein: No. 8
• John Fanta: No. 8
• CBS Sports’ Kyle Boone: No. 7
• CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish: No. 7
• The Athletic: No. 12
• Andy Katz: No. 11

SEC coaches take shots at Cal

John Calipari and Arkansas are struggling right now. The Razorbacks have yet to win an SEC game (0-5) and are on pace to miss the NCAA Tournament entirely. The honeymoon phase did not last long in Fayetteville. Jeff Goodman went asking around to see just how bad things are with the Hogs right now. Calipari’s rival coaches aren’t impressed.

“(Arkansas has) a ton of individual talent,” one SEC coach told Goodman in a feature for Hoops HQ. “But none of their pieces fit. None of them.”

“I don’t think Calipari and his staff can adapt,” another SEC coach said.

“There’s just no fear now when I see him on the other sideline,” said one more. “The game has changed and he is becoming archaic.”

Yikes… For Goodman’s entire column with Hoops HQ, click here.

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NBA Draft Big Board

Over the weekend, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony updated his Top 100 prospect rankings for the 2025 NBA Draft where he had five Kentucky players make the cut. None of them were ranked higher than 60th in a draft that will only feature 59 total picks, but the names listed and where they were ranked were still quite interesting.

ESPN’s Top 100 2025 NBA Draft Big Board

• No. 60 | SG/SF Koby Brea (Age: 22.1)
• No. 75 | C Amari Williams (Age: 22.9)
• No. 78 | SG/SF Jaxson Robinson (Age: 22.1)
• No. 91 | PF/C Andrew Carr (Age: 22.9)
• No. 92 | SG Otega Oweh (Age: 21.5)

That’s all from me this morning. The KSR Radio Show crew is back in studio at 10:00 a.m. EST after a “Best Of” show yesterday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’ll see you on the radiowaves.