Mark Pope says it is 'really important' for Kentucky to stay in the 'national conversation'

Is the NCAA Tournament field decided in December? No. Do rankings and advanced analytics really matter at this stage? Of course not — although the last 20 national champions have been ranked inside the top 12 of the Week 6 AP Poll, so there is some correlation there. In the grand scheme of things, though, anybody can play their way into title contention status just as easily as they can play their way out and the conference schedule is when things get really serious.

That doesn’t mean power rankings and national perception are irrelevant, though. In fact, Kentucky‘s standing in all aspects — recruiting, home advantage, fan passion, winningest tradition, everything — is important to Mark Pope.

No matter how big or small, the king of college basketball is supposed to win everything. And that’s the kind of program Pope wants to lead in Lexington. So while the Wildcats’ status as the No. 5 team in the AP Poll, Coaches Poll and the NET on Dec. 12 won’t impact what they’ll be in March, it’s still important.

“Listen, I’m glad we are in the conversation and I’m glad we are in the national conversation,” Pope said. “That’s where we are supposed to be, it’s Kentucky, right? I’m really happy with all of that. More importantly, I just want us to be a great team, right? And we want to keep getting better.”

He didn’t like how Kentucky played after going up 17-0 against Colgate, but he did like the resolve and end result of a win to move to 9-1 on the year.

“We had some runs tonight where we got better. We started the game better and then we just — the energy just turned a little bit on us. But we will learn from this and we will get better,” Pope said. “Right now it’s a race to get better. It’s Kentucky, we have to win every game along the way. That’s a beautiful thing and I’m not complaining, I think that’s why Kentucky is special. All of the things matter, everything matters.

“The metrics matter, the analytics matter, the efficiencies matter. All of those things are really important to us. We would like to be the flagship program in every single category that we grade and rank and evaluate as a team. That’s our goal. It’s all really important.”