Mark Pope showed his team the USA vs. Canada hockey fights in Monday's film session

If you ask Kentucky fans what this team’s weakness is, injuries aside, most would say toughness. Adjusting to the physical style of play in the SEC is an ongoing process for many players on the roster, who transferred in from other conferences. During his call-in show last night, Mark Pope was asked about toughness, which led to an interesting discussion about how he defines the trait and how his players are striving — and sometimes failing — to meet his standard.

Pope said that he started Monday’s film session with the clips of the fights in the USA vs. Canada All-Star Game in the 4 Nations Face-Off. If you didn’t see it, there were three fights in the first nine seconds.

“A lot of times we think of toughness as the first 30 seconds of the [USA vs. Canada] hockey all-star game, if anybody witnessed that. That was in our film session this morning where guys just threw off the gloves and everyone was in the penalty box in the first 90 seconds. Sometimes we think of toughness as that.”

Seriously, if you missed it, hit play below.

Pope said he didn’t just show the clips to the team in hopes it would inspire them to be tougher physically. After Saturday’s late-game collapse vs. Texas, he’s more worried about his players being tough mentally.

“And certainly, that’s a component of toughness. But for us, toughness is when the whole world is burning around you, you can still be focused on the task at hand. Toughness, to me, is an ability to be completely undistractable. Like, there is nothing that can distract you from the moment, whether it’s your own fears or concerns or whether it’s a referee’s whistle or whether it’s something the opposing team does, or a mistake that you just made on the last play, or the crowd or the arena or injuries or anything else. To me, the greatest toughness is the ability to focus no matter what distractions are out there. And that is a learned skill.”

Pope admitted that mental toughness is something “we need to keep growing.” He referred to it as “presentness” during his postgame remarks in Austin. He told Tom Leach that the final four minutes vs. the Longhorns was one of two stretches this season where his team did not play winning basketball during crucial moments. The mistakes were even more egregious upon review.

“There were a couple of plays down the stretch that I’m sure every member of BBN has picked apart where you’re like, what are we doing? And we were feeling the same thing. And for us, this was just one of, there’s only really been two games this season where we kind of just didn’t function like us in the winning moments of the game. And the baggage just got to us.

“We know our guys care, our guys are competitors, our guys are fighters, our guys want to win,” he said. “And so you look at the video like, how is it possible that this person didn’t do this at this time? And usually, it’s not a question of being engaged or caring or physically tough enough; it’s a question of like, your head spinning and you thinking about something that just happened or thinking about what might happen or thinking about the consequences and not being locked into the moment.”

Tomorrow, Kentucky hosts Vanderbilt, a rematch of another game in which they were burned by their own mistakes. The Cats committed 17 turnovers in the first meeting in Nashville in January, blowing a 7-point lead with nine minutes to go. Kentucky will likely be without Lamont Butler (shoulder) and Jaxson Robinson (wrist) again, which makes mental fortitude even more important.

“It’s a great skill that’s a part of championship teams,” Pope said. “It’s the DNA of toughness. It’s something that we’re good at that we’re trying to get great at.”