No baggage, no fear: How Mark Pope’s Wildcats are rewriting Kentucky’s March story

I guess I just didn’t know what to expect traveling to Milwaukee last week, arriving on Wednesday ahead of pregame press conferences and open locker rooms for media on Thursday, followed by the long wait to tip-off on Friday. Confidence was high on the drive up, then nothing about Troy invoked fear after talking with the Trojans. Remember the confidence Jack Gohlke had before the Kentucky matchup last season? He called his shot, making it clear that if you didn’t know his name then, you’d know it afterward. These guys were camera shy, talking about how grateful they were for the opportunity against a blue blood on the big stage — oh, and a lot of Waffle House.

One quote stuck out when getting a feel for the matchup the day before the Wildcats’ run officially tipped off.

“You’re going out there with the utmost confidence that if we do what we do, there’s a chance it can be enough,” Troy forward Thomas Dowd told KSR. “If it’s not, then we showed the world who we are and gave it our all.”

You certainly respected the Trojans for their body of work to get to that point after winning the Sun Belt, but when combining personnel and vibes, for lack of a better word, there was nothing to suggest Kentucky was in danger. Their open practice didn’t change much, either — although that means nothing considering I watched Saint Peter’s in the same setting in 2022 and decided it was a name-your-score game for the Cats. Whoops.

That didn’t stop the fear from creeping in as we inched toward tip-off. Who would be the next Doug Edert or Gohlke? Maybe those All-Star Specials would be the fuel Troy needed to send Kentucky home in the first round for a third time in four years? There was something about Coach Cal and Arkansas winning that first game against Bill Self and Kansas the day before, too, creating this one-upmanship race as Mark Pope still hadn’t gotten that March Madness monkey off his back quite yet. Something had to screw all of this up and end this incredible season in heartbreaking fashion for Chicken Little Nation, right?

That led to a 19-point win with Kentucky trailing for 23 seconds — essentially no drama, a No. 3 seed looking like a No. 3 and a No. 14 seed looking like a No. 14.

“That’s what we were talking about, you know? Let’s keep today boring for the watchers, we don’t want to — there’s not gonna be any upset today. Let’s keep it boring,” Collin Chandler said of the performance. “It’s been a theme for us, keeping the same old boring habits. We’re gonna keep it boring for the fans, as well. No upsets here.”

Pope gets his first NCAA Tournament win and the Cats get their second since 2019, the stay in Milwaukee is extended. Excellent, just what the doctor ordered.

Then No. 6 seed Illinois handled business against No. 11 seed Xavier, leading to the next rush of emotions for this fanbase. John Calipari and his staff had Kentucky’s number in the Arkansas matchup earlier in the year. Was Orlando Antigua next? How do you slow down a pair of pros in Kasparas Jakucionis and Will Riley? Zvonimir Ivisic got his reunion win, maybe he shared all of his deepest, darkest secrets with his brother, Tomislav?

Oh, and the Wildcats would have to do it in a true road environment, Illini fans filling the gym with orange while limiting the blue to a section or two. That never happens for this program in the postseason, the crowd advantage almost always something you had in your back pocket when looking for paths to a victory. That was taken away, too.

The result? Kentucky trailing 26 seconds in a nine-point victory to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time in six years. Another boring day for watchers, as promised.

There was a moment where Illinois had chipped into the Wildcats’ lead with the crowd getting into it, starting a loud ILL-INI chant hoping to flip the momentum. As the cheers intensified, Lamont Butler looked into the stands, shook his head and smiled back to the court, very similar to Stephen Johnson’s ‘I love this ****’ moment against Louisville in 2016. He was loose, just as the rest of his teammates were. There was a confidence on the floor we simply haven’t seen in the last half-decade here, playing focused and inspired, locking in defensively while hitting shots — including a stretch of 10 makes on 11 attempts out of the half.

With their season on the line, Kentucky felt prepared, ready to simply take care of business and move on. There was no obsession with the moment or what-ifs about worst-case scenarios, becoming the next teary-eyed bunch on One Shining Moment watching the underdog come out on top yet again.

It brought me back to that Arkansas loss on February 1 and the immediate reaction that followed — including my own, writing a column with the following headline: “For the first time at Kentucky, Mark Pope did not understand the assignment in loss to Coach Cal.” In it, the phrase ‘considering its importance’ was written over and over when highlighting my own personal gripes about what went wrong, stressing just how much the game meant to the fanbase and how desperate they were to get that one above the rest. Why did our coaches and players not care about it the way their coaches and players did?

It’s because this group does not have the emotional baggage of Calipari’s departure, that game essentially Big Blue Nation vs. Arkansas, not Kentucky vs. Arkansas. Of course they wanted to win it, but no more than Wright State, Duke, WKU, Louisville, Florida, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Troy or Illinois. The Razorbacks were desperate and earned that win, but the only thing separating that loss from the other 11 on the year for the Wildcats was ego — our ego, not the team’s.

What worked against Kentucky in that fan-driven rivalry battle worked for Pope and the Wildcats in Milwaukee, showing the weight of Saint Peter’s or Oakland was entirely on the fanbase’s shoulders, not theirs. It was our PTSD, nightmares of Gohlke shooting his bow-and-arrow into the crowd and Edert’s weird mustache haunting us. We went through that breakup, not the coaches or players. No matter how unprepared we felt for that moment, they couldn’t have been more prepared.

Take Pope’s comments after the Troy win, for example. He got caught up in the emotion and drama before his staff reminded him just how ready they were for this — all of this.

“I’m fighting so hard to keep bringing myself back to not taking on the magnitude of the history and all the things that are just too big. They all turn out to be distractions,” he said. “I’ll compliment my staff. Mikhail McLean grabbed me yesterday and didn’t cuss me out, but he settled me down. He’s like, ‘Coach, we’ve had more time to prepare than we normally have. We’re too much in the weeds. You’ve got to breathe right now, and we’re going to be good. Just be in this moment.’”

That allowed Kentucky to continue writing its own history, becoming the first team in college basketball to ever make the Sweet 16 with zero returning points from the season prior. The Wildcats also became just the fifth UK team since 2000 to win their first two NCAA Tournament games by at least nine points, joining the 2003, 2010, 2012 and 2015 squads.

They were hammers, not nails. This group walked into Fiserv Forum as a No. 3 seed and played like a No. 3 seed, not worrying about history or streaks or pressure. That mindset got them to Indianapolis, now just two wins away from a Final Four.

Fans may have to exorcise some demons, but these Wildcats do not.

“We’re not worried about none of that,” Oweh told KSR. “We weren’t here. We don’t got nothing to do with that, for real. We just try to live in the moment right now. Whatever happened then, that’s what happened. We’re just trying to be where our feet are, for real.”