Mark Pope says Kentucky's ability to avoid looking ahead to Duke will determine how good they can be

The first words out of Mark Pope‘s mouth during his debut Kentucky Basketball Media Day to open the preseason focused on his team’s desire to find moments to be still, a message stemming from a recent sermon at church that “just hit my heart hard.” He wanted his players and staff to carve out time during the day where they stayed off their phones and social media, keeping to themselves in silence rather than listening to the outside noise.

That includes practicing what he preaches himself.

“This job is just begging you to never stop,” Pope said at the time. “It’s begging you to be so consumed by everything that you never really think and that you never really listen. You never really, really listen. And if we miss on that opportunity, for me in a spiritual sense, if I don’t take the opportunity to really stop and listen and kind of commune, I’m not going to be a great coach.”

Up to this point, though, there haven’t been many opportunities for distractions. The excitement of the preseason events and getting this thing rolling was plenty to hold them over until the real stuff started. Kentucky’s season opener was its own event, too — Pope’s first as head coach at his alma mater, the players’ first as Wildcats. Game two, though, is the first real test of being still and staying in the moment with Bucknell coming to town on Saturday.

Why? Because they’ve got Duke coming up just three days later on college basketball’s biggest and brightest stage in the Champions Classic — appointment viewing for even the sport’s most casual fans. That’s a short turnaround coming off what most would consider a tune-up opportunity against Patriot League competition. It’d be easy to look ahead to the Blue Devils, if not expected. It’s the game we’ve all had circled on our calendars since Pope took the job, his first big-time matchup leading the program, one that would serve as the measuring stick for expectations the rest of the way. That’s when we’ve all mentally prepared ourselves to find out whether this Kentucky team can truly contend.

Pope sees it differently, though. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. His team’s ability to stay in this moment rather than looking ahead to Duke — or any game down the road, at that — will decide this team’s long-term fate.

“It’s something we practice every day,” the Kentucky head coach told KSR on Thursday. “We talk about it, we talk about it before every game, ‘This is the biggest game we’ve ever played.’ Two ways. One, it’s just the way we go about business. Everybody’s human, so we all can get distracted by all kind of things. We get distracted by things going wrong and things going right and things in the future and things in the past, right? In fact, all of the gravity as an athlete is trying to pull you away from being focused on right now.

“We practice this on a daily basis, about, can we just be here right now? And that’s going to also be a determining factor in how good we are as a team. Can we be present right now?”

His team’s approach to the Wright State win was a strong start, Kentucky locked in from the opening tip and cruising through the final buzzer. The result was never in doubt, a confident and decisive victory that saw the Wildcats look the part on both ends. Coming in as 20-point favorites, they doubled up on those expectations in the 41-point beatdown to open the Pope era with a statement.

That’s the approach he demands in each meeting, practice and game as they come living in the now.

“We talked about being intentional, I felt like the guys were really intentional to start the game in our opener,” Pope continued. “And to me, another way to define it is they were actually fully present in the moment. They weren’t distracted by the crowd or the referees or the fans or the other team. They weren’t distracted by what happened yesterday or what could happen tomorrow. They were just right there doing that forcefully.

“We’d like to practice that all year long. We’d like to practice it in the 27th minute of the game against Bucknell, whether we’re up 15 or down 15. We’d like to be present and we keep reminding ourselves of the power in being present, maybe more than ever in the world. We are inundated by every conceivable distraction there is.”

Take the Wildcats’ shootaround strategy, for example. As things wind down with game prep, Pope calls for complete silence in the gym during a brief five-minute period. No talking, no cell phones, no distractions — nothing.

“We even had some people in the upper deck — they were working at the gym the other day — that I asked to please be quiet during those five minutes,” the Kentucky head coach said.

That’s their time to be still and experience the moment as it’s unfolding, away from the outside noise. It’s not much, but it’s more than most are able to experience in the chaos of day-to-day life.

“For these guys, it’s probably the only five minutes during their entire week — including sleep — where they’re not having any external input,” Pope added. “When you can focus, whether it’s by taking away the external input or by blocking it out — and usually it’s by both — that’s when you have real power to function and to perform at the highest level.”

Life happens, obviously. You’re going to get excited for the big games and opportunities, maybe read a headline or two, but it can’t take you off the path of being present and taking every challenge as it comes — no matter how big or small.

One step at a time, one day at a time.

“When we think about Bucknell and Duke and the games down the road, all the things, it’s just like — all of that is great, it’s all real,” Pope said. “Like, we recognize it, but what we practice, can we be right here, right now, having this conversation between you and me?

“If we can do that, there’s a lot of power in that, and that’s when we have a chance to perform the best we can.”