Mark Pope talked about Kentucky's 10-1 start, Rick Pitino, and more on Jim Rome

Mark Pope is trying to cram in as much media as possible before Kentucky leaves for New York City. After talking to local reporters, Carr went on the Jim Rome Show to talk about Kentucky’s 10-1 start to the season, the win over Louisville, and what lies ahead.

If you’ve kept up with Pope’s comments this week on his call-in show, Jon Rothstein’s podcast, and today’s media opportunity, he covers a lot of the same material. Kentucky’s schedule is so hard they don’t play a Quad 2 game until February (starting with the game vs. Arkansas), Lamont Butler was incredible vs. Louisville and can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 30 seconds, Pope had nightmares about his loss to Louisville as a player and dropped out of law school to become a coach, etc.

He did give a few great details about that bus ride home from Freedom Hall in case you’re wondering what it was like to be on a bus with Rick Pitino after taking a loss to the Cards in the mid-1990s.

“Well, it was hard to hear after you got on the bus. It was loud in there, and there was a ton of emotion. And it got really, really personal, because this game is really, really personal. And Coach had this — he still has this magical way of like, ripping you down to shreds where you get to be rebuilt again. It was pretty brutal, man. It was enough to make you feel like that will never happen again, as long as we’re associated with this game.”

One thing that never gets old is hearing Pope talk about how much his guys cherish playing at Kentucky.

“I think we’re one of ten teams or nine teams in college basketball that had zero returning players and so for these guys, we knew we had a bunch of experience from the portal. They just don’t have experience together, and they don’t have any experience wearing a Kentucky jersey, and our guys have been so humble and so curious as they try to build this team together. That’s been beautiful to watch, man, it’s been really fun to watch how willing our guys have been to just try and do it this way and I think it bodes well for us because our guys continue to be that way, and I think we have a chance to get so much better than we are right now and we’re a pretty good team right now.”

Pope even told Rome that he and Lee Anne have had fans come up to them at the airport when they’ve picked up recruits for official visits to tell them they’d recruited the players on the plane.

“Our guys get it from the first moment that their name is mentioned as a potential recruit by the University of Kentucky. It is a torrential onslaught from our fanbase on social media. And so they get it then and then, these guys come on official visits and I’m telling you, you walk off the plane and you’re immediately inundated in the airport or on the plane in. We go pick the guys up at the airport, and we have people come up to us, they would get down the escalator before the recruit and be like, ‘Hey, I talked to him the whole flight here. I think he’s in the bag!’ I mean, just random Kentucky fans. And so you get exposed to it pretty early, but then there’s nothing like it.”

Indeed. Pope also invited Rome to come watch Kentucky play Ohio State at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, but Rome will be in Mexico. He asked for a raincheck.