Mark Pope wishes he'd played Lamont Butler more despite foul trouble

If tonight taught us anything, it’s how valuable Lamont Butler is to this basketball team. Butler played only 19 minutes in the 70-66 loss to Clemson due to foul trouble and an ankle injury, but still finished with 16 points (6-9 FG, 2-4 3PT), 5 assists, 2 rebounds, 2 turnovers, and 1 steal. Without him, the Cats looked completely out of sorts, turning the ball over and failing to get into a flow.

Afterward, Mark Pope said not having Butler on the floor was one of three reasons why Clemson dictated the pace of the game.

“One was our inability to rebound the ball. Two was, they do a nice job jamming the ball. Three was kind of dealing with foul issues with Lamont was tricky in the first half, and then the injury was tricky in the second half so there were a lot of different things, both circumstances of the game and what Clemson does, that made it more difficult to kind of play with the pace that we traditionally want to.”

Butler played just seven minutes in the first half. He drew his first foul just over a minute into the game, and his second at the 15:11 mark when Kentucky led by three. He checked back in after Clemson took its first lead with 8:07 to go. After helping the Cats go back up five with a layup off a turnover, he headed back to the bench with 5:41 to go and stayed there the remainder of the half. During that stretch, Clemson went on a 14-2 run to take a seven-point lead into halftime.

Looking back, Pope regrets not playing Butler and Andrew Carr more at the end of the first half, calling his decision to go small a “very poor miscalculation.”

“One of the things that every coach struggles with is, that you never want to foul your own guy out. And I probably did that with Andrew [Carr] a little bit tonight. I probably needed to play him with two fouls in the first half, and I probably could have done a little bit more with Lamont.

“So, late in the first half, a bit of what turned out to be a very poor miscalculation. We had gone a little run, and so I went small, thinking that I could save Andrew and save Ansley [Almonor] a second, and that went really bad. But, you know, in hindsight, maybe I roll the dice and play those guys a little bit more in the first half. That’ll be something we’ll argue about and have no answer for. But philosophically, I don’t want to foul my own guys out.”

Three minutes into the second half, Butler tweaked his ankle under the basket and limped off. He was able to check back in and play through it, hitting a clutch three to give Kentucky the lead, 52-51, at the 10:57 mark. Unfortunately, he picked up his fourth foul with 7:09 to go. Butler came back in with four minutes to play and tried to keep the Cats within striking distance, even hitting a three to cut Clemson’s lead to two with 2.2 seconds left, but it was too little, too late.

In his postgame conversation with Tom Leach, Pope further mused about not playing Butler and Carr more and said that at the end of the game, Butler was giving all he had despite the rolled ankle. Even with the injury and foul trouble, Butler led the team in plus/minus efficiency at +17.

“When those guys were off the floor, we just didn’t function great so I wonder if there’s a way to roll the dice a little bit more and magnify those minutes and then Lamont was kind of giving us everything he had in the second half but he was on a little bit of broken wheel and so certainly that had some impact on the game.”

Butler was able to play through the pain tonight, but maybe we can get Jeff Sheppard to share some ankle recovery tips ahead of Saturday’s game vs. Gonzaga.