Mark Pope sets benchmarks for rebounding, transition opportunities in year one at Kentucky

Mark Pope hasn’t been too dissatisfied with anything his team has shown through two exhibition matchups and the season opener. It’s hard to nitpick when you’ve won by a combined 143 points against Kentucky Wesleyan, Minnesota State and Wright State.

But it hasn’t been perfect, and of the few complaints, the first-year coach has been consistent.

Kentucky has lost the offensive rebounding battle in all three matchups — 10-9 vs. KWC, 8-6 vs. MSU and 11-7 vs. WSU — with a total deficit of seven against inferior talent and size. “We need to be better,” Pope said after his first official win of the season this week, even in a 41-point win. That’s been a talking point after the program’s two most recent outings and is undoubtedly a point of emphasis in practice moving forward.

What does that look like, though? Where is the sweet spot for Kentucky on the offensive glass to keep Pope pleased? He’s got a few numbers in mind.

“We’d like to be a 30 percent offensive rebound percentage team,” he said Thursday ahead of Kentucky’s matchup vs. Bucknell. “We’d like to be that consistently. Really, it’s a bad number for our guys because it doesn’t really mean anything, but I would love to live in this — if we could be a 14 offensive rebound per game team, it’d be extraordinary. Certainly above 10 and we’re just not living in that space at all right now.

“That’s part of — we didn’t really make much progress last game, either, but it’s something we’re really focused on and we will make progress.”

It’s not a baseless goal, Pope just throwing numbers around for the sake of doing so as his team dominates the competition. The issue is that offensive rebounding is crucial for a group that launches threes at the rate his does, the Wildcats minimizing second-chance opportunities and extended possessions when they don’t attack the glass.

That may work when the schedule is lighter, but it’s going to be a different story when the high-profile matchups take place and conference play rolls around.

“We’re just trying to figure out how to get there,” Pope added. “It’s very important to how we play, it’s really important to how we play. It gives us staying power, it gives us confidence in all the other things we do. Our presence on the offensive glass and our consistency on the defensive glass is really important for us.”

An area of success for Kentucky? Transition opportunities, the Wildcats racking up 36 fast break points and scoring 18 off turnovers while forcing 12 overall. This group gets up and down the floor and racks up buckets in a hurry.

Continuing that trend is a top priority for Pope, too. And yes, he’s got a number in mind for that, as well.

“If we could be over 20 percent transition possessions, we’re pretty happy with that. We’d love to be there during the course of the season,” he said. “That would put us in pretty rarefied air. It’s hard to get there actually, so we would like to be in that space, if we can. The game is going to dictate that in a whole bunch of different ways and we define transition probably a little bit differently than it’s defined (traditionally).

“A lot of times it will be defined as a shot attempt within eight seconds. For us, our transitions actually extend a little bit longer. Our transition possessions can extend even to a secondary action, as long as we have kept a team in rotation, where they haven’t had a chance to get balanced matchups. We’ll actually extend the way we evaluate transition possessions a little bit longer.”

Kentucky has hit the latter mark just fine while struggling with the former quite a bit. We’ll see if they’ll be able to meet both benchmarks when Bucknell comes to town on Saturday with tip-off scheduled for 4 p.m. ET inside Rupp Arena.