Nate Oats promises 'much better showing against Kentucky' after Ole Miss loss: "Pope's done a very good job."

This league is a gift and a curse. On one end, the losses can pile up on you as ranked competition stacks up, drowning with no cupcake life raft available for clear feel-good wins you can Sharpie in ahead of time. If your team’s got some stuff to figure out, you may just have to take your lumps. On the flip side, you’re never too far away from being back in it and regrouping, turning a loss into a momentum-shifting winning streak against top-25 teams. The next one is always just a few days away.

Unfortunately for Kentucky, that next one for No. 4 Alabama is in Lexington after taking a double-digit home loss on the chin this week against No. 21 Ole Miss, and Nate Oats is promising a bounce-back effort inside Rupp Arena.

“So the good thing with basketball is, after a bad loss, a tough one, you don’t have to wait too long to get your next game. The next one here is not going to be an easy one, but at least we can play it pretty quick again,” Oats said Friday. “Look, it’s not good to drop home games if you’re trying to win the league championship. We put ourselves in a hole and we’re gonna find out way to dig ourselves out of that hole, starting with a much better showing against Kentucky.”

Praise for Mark Pope

That’s the bad news for the Cats. The bad news for the Tide, however, is that UK is a pretty darn good team in its own right and will certainly have something to say about it.

Oats certainly won’t be overlooking this new-look group under Mark Pope.

“Kentucky’s offense is currently second in the country in efficiency, third in the country in points per game. Coach Pope’s done a very good job kind of modernizing their offense,” Oats said. “… (He’s) done a good job, they run really good stuff, they’ve got good players. They’re appropriate players with a pretty good mix of everything.”

No overlooking Kentucky

There are standouts all over the floor, Oats singling out essentially all of the team’s top contributors both in the starting lineup and off the bench. It’s a group with depth, experience and talent.

“They’ve got three-point shooters spacing the floor, they’ve got bigs that can handle and pass and know how to make plays. They’ve also got seven guys on their team that have scored 1,000 points in their career, so he’s done a really good job in the portal,” Oats said. “(Jaxson) Robinson’s obviously been big for him. (Otega) Oweh has been kind of Mr. Consistency, just always in double figures. (Koby) Brea and Robinson are super explosive, (Lamont) Butler, we’ve see him before when he was at San Diego State in the Sweet 16 two years ago.”

As for the frontcourt, he likes Andrew Carr’s scoring and shooting potential while Amari Williams is a dynamic playmaker in a 7-foot, 260-pound body. Maybe most importantly, they both know how to run the offense and create open shots for the team’s snipers from three.

“They’re both high IQ guys that can make the right reads. Carr is a capable shooter. It’s not what he’s looking to do — he’s got nine made threes on the year — but when he shoots, it looks great, in my opinion. We can’t just sit there and let him tee up threes on us. We don’t want to let him handle on the perimeter,” Oats said. “Those three guys (including Brandon Garrison) know their job is to get these shooters open, and they’re good passers. They know how to run that kind of the delay action, as you call it, with the five-out and them out handling.

“They can pass, they can make plays, and if you don’t have good defenders on them, they can for sure score. Carr can get downhill off drives, but they post them some — they kind of go high-low, five-four. … Those two guys are a big part of what they’re doing.”

A monster at Rupp Arena

A reporter highlighted Kentucky’s low-scoring outputs in losses with the Wildcats struggling a bit with physicality in their worst performances. Oats’ counter? Those games were typically away from home.

Inside Rupp Arena, Pope’s group has been mostly terrific.

“They haven’t lost at home yet. On some neutrals and road games, they’ve not scored that well. We’ve looked at all of their games, tried to see who’s done what well, and they’ve been doing a great job running the five-out with the bigs that can handle,” Oats said. “You gotta do a good job, they’ve got good answers for defenses. Teams that have been able to — in some of the losses, they’ve looked like they weren’t quite in tune, some teams maybe a little more physical with them. We’ve got to get them out of rhythm a little bit. Sometimes that’s what happens in basketball. When you take as many threes as they do and as we do, sometimes you just miss shots. I don’t think we can just plan on them missing shots. We’re gonna have to cause them to miss, force them to turn the ball over and bring some intensity to the game that I don’t think we had on Tuesday.

“… They’re good. They’ve got a lot of good players, and we’re gonna have to play well. It’s on the road and I’m sure we’re all gonna be ready for it.”