Mark Pope thinks Kentucky's issues in losses are fixable: "It's not triage"

Kentucky’s loss to Georgia felt like deja vu in that the issues that plagued the Cats vs. Ohio State and Clemson came roaring back. Once again, Kentucky let a physical team bully them around, turned the ball over too often, and didn’t create enough shots. Even though it feels like the blueprint to beat Kentucky is laminated after Tuesday night, Mark Pope believes all of those issues are fixable, even in the short term.

“Listen, it’s not triage where we have a bad team,” Pope said today. “We have a really good team. We didn’t play particularly well and so there’s a lot of things that were a little bit anomalous, where we just didn’t play great. And certainly, Georgia had some contribution to that.”

Ahead of his team’s trip to No. 14 Mississippi State, which is even more physical and talented than Georgia, Pope outlined two areas of focus: rebounding and ball protection. Georgia outrebounded Kentucky 41-34 on Tuesday, the fourth game in a row the Cats have lost the battle of the boards. On Saturday, they’ll face a Mississippi State team that ranks just outside the top 30 nationally in offensive rebounding rate (35.9%).

“We’re continuing to work on the glass right now. That’s been something interesting because we had been one of the top defensive rebounding percentage teams in the country, and that’s kind of bit us, a little bit. And so we’re rethinking some approaches there that hopefully will see immediate progress on, because we’ve been really good, right? We’ve just got to be good in this league right now, with the physicality and the way this is being played.”

Pope seemed less concerned about the 14 turnovers the Cats committed vs. Georgia. Kentucky still ranks No. 3 in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.94), but that number would be a lot higher if not for their losses.

“We’ve been really good in terms of ball protection. I think we’ve been number one in the country. I think we’re close so I don’t think it’s reinventing the wheel for us on the ball protection side. We just didn’t do it well in this game.”

“So, there are certainly areas that we’re going to continue to grow and fine-tune, but there’s not a lot of total restructuring going on.”

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All season, Pope has talked about the importance of getting his guys not to default to bad habits. The Georgia loss showed that’s still a work in progress. After the game, Pope talked about how distracted his guys seemed on the floor, whether it be from the crowd, the whistles, a shot not going in, etc. Getting them to tune that out and lock in on each other will be what determines how far they go this season.

“Our guys trust and believe in each other, but when you start talking about trust and belief in where you go for answers, that’s a process that everybody is trying to find. It’s not a matter of not being able to find it. I mean, our guys have found it a lot this season. Like there’s been a whole lot of trust and faith on this team, where we’ve gone to the well, the right well, to find answers in the biggest games that have been played all season, right? But being able to get there every single time is part of the challenge, right? At the end of the year, it’s, can you get there six straight games? Can you go to the right space with all the different distractions, different vibes? Can you keep going right to the same place and keep trusting over and over and over again?

“And so that’s kind of the space we’re living in right now, is, how consistently can we be in the right spot on the floor? How consistently can our faith be placed in the right space? How consistently can we tune out all the distractions that happen around the game and kind of be locked in just to the moment? We’re fully capable. We’ve done it. We’ve done it at the highest level. We’ve done it pretty consistently. But now can we do it every time?”

When it comes to being more physical, Pope said that’s something everyone in the SEC is striving for right now. He just wants his team to understand how to do it and when to do it.

“The game always gets more and more physical in the league, and so our guys understanding — and there’s also a part of understanding where you can be really, really physical and where you can’t, right? And that’s part of our determinations. There are a lot of facets to that. One is just the physics aspect of it, of having a low center of gravity and kind of being the hit-first guy and a first hit and second, there’s all the schematics and the skill of it.

“And then there’s also the mentality of it, and the IQ of it. The mentality of it is kind of this aggression side of it where you’re always thinking about contact, contact, contact, and then the IQ of it is understanding when and where it’s appropriate and where it can be utilized and where it’s important.”