Mark Pope Still Hasn't Showered Since the Loss to Ole Miss

Losers don’t deserve to shower with soap. Okay, maybe Syracuse head coach Fran Brown has taken it a little too far. However, when winning means everything, some other priorities are no longer priorities. For Mark Pope, he’s too busy trying to fix the Kentucky basketball team to worry about showering.

The Wildcats are in the middle of a funk. Kentucky has four losses in the last five games. The last two included one of the largest halftime deficits in school history and an emotional defeat to Pope’s predecessor. It’s his roughest patch since he took over the job at Kentucky and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We love that it’s tough. If we do this right guys, I’m a big believer in that — I love when the story gets murky. I love when you start to doubt. Those are my favorite times because that’s when really special things happen,” he said during Thursday’s press conference.

“It’s really painful. We get angry with each other on the staff and in the locker room and everywhere else, and there’s frustration and all the things that come with it. But I love the story. I love it. It’s super painful. I mean, I did my radio show last night, and I had a couple callers, and you could just feel the pain in their heart and their voice. But it’s the journey that we go on together that’s incredible.”

Joy wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for pain. For Mark Pope, that pain is smelly.

“It doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. And that’s never acceptable, but sometimes it doesn’t work out, and that’s why it is so incredibly intoxicating to be a part of it. It’s why it’s so fun to be in the grind where, you know, I still haven’t showered yet. That’s smelly, but it’s actually super cool.”

That may sound disgusting to some, especially when you consider that he took a flight during this smelly stretch, but who amongst us hasn’t skipped a day of bathing every once in a while? He’s busy. He doesn’t need to scrub his armpits right now. Mark Pope’s busy deciphering Kentucky’s championship formula and it’s never been more challenging.

“BBN knows that. They know grinding and trying, like desperately trying to find answers and trying to find resolve and trying to figure it out and and it’s actually super cool. It’s really great that we get to do that together. And it is painful. It’s tough. If I was a smarter coach, we would figure it out all out in one day and you wouldn’t kind of feel like you got a solution here, but then you start leaking water somewhere else. But that’s actually just basketball. It makes it great.

Pope added, “Winning championships, sometimes it looks easy, but a lot of times what you don’t see is that we barely got over the threshold.”

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