No chance for told-you-sos with Mark Pope's first statement win

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. Mark Pope hadn’t done anything of substance since landing the Kentucky job, at least in the eyes of the naysayers concerned John Calipari was run out of Lexington. On the surface, I get it. You’re replacing a Hall of Fame coach with a national championship under his belt with a guy bringing more Hamilton raps on camera with him than postseason wins. Different is scary, especially when you know that top-ranked recruiting classes were always going to dangled in front of you like meat on a stick and the idea of one of those groups finally being built for March is better than Pope potentially not being a fit.

He went out and built a roster of portal standouts with limited pro upside while filling out a staff of wanted commodities. Then he found his groove on the recruiting trail, adding three top-30 prospects ahead of the early signing period — two being in-state talents. How about the politicking with press conferences, community events and an all-in approach with the other sports on campus? He’s aced every PR move from the minute he arrived back in Lexington.

That silent minority still sat around waiting to pounce, though. He’d done everything he was supposed to up to that point without proving himself on the most important part of his job description: winning basketball games, specifically games that mattered. The Wildcats put a hurting on the poor exhibition opponents, then did the same in the pair of home openers, winning those four by a combined 171 points. Never competitive, never a doubt. Certainly not going to convince skeptics Pope was magically the man for the job by beating up on the little guys.

It was all about showing, not telling. And they wouldn’t be able to show it until they got under those bright lights of State Farm Arena against No. 6 Duke, widely seen as one of the most talented teams in college basketball this season with as many as three lottery picks. They had the length and athleticism and upside, all of the measuring stick traits we used when Coach Cal was here to decide if a group had it or didn’t. The Blue Devils are contenders, no doubt about it, Cooper Flagg this year’s media darling as the likely No. 1 selection in the draft next June.

Beat that, they said. Then Duke came out and threw the first punch, both sides looking like the teams we thought they were, for better or worse. The Blue Devils led by as many as 10 points in the opening half and could’ve been up more had they knocked down a couple more open looks while the Wildcats were saved by seven makes from deep to keep the score closer than the game actually felt in real time. Those Twitter fingers already started tapping away, drafts and bookmarks quickly recovered and shared on timelines with similar pessimism spreading on message boards. It appeared we were trending toward a 2018-level beatdown, Big Blue Nation searching for retirement homes for their old-as-dirt fifth-years just one Kon Knueppel crossover away from busting a hip.

Then Kentucky responded with a plus-14 second half, holding Duke to an abysmal 29.4 percent from the field and 9.1 percent from three while forcing six turnovers. The Wildcats hung around and stayed within striking distance, waiting for the perfect opportunity to make their move down the stretch. They weren’t playing out of their minds by any means, but the responses kept coming in waves without letting go of the rope when momentum flipped. As fatigue hit the young pups and mistakes piled up, the old dogs let their experience push the team across the finish line. Where they lacked talent, Pope’s group made up for it with heart. They shook off the individual battle losses and came away victorious in the 40-minute war on college basketball’s biggest stage.

Not bad for a big-game debut for Pope, eh?

It may be an island of misfit transfers coming together for the first time in their careers, but the pieces clearly work well and they’re brilliantly coached. They took on the tall task of coming up with a game plan to slow down the best of the best and looked prepared, even if outmatched. Then they responded by making mid-game adjustments to prod and pry until they found potential vulnerabilities and attacked, executing in the tightest moments to come out on the other side alive to tell the tale. It was an absolute clinic, one that truly put the sport on notice with fans and analysts alike wondering what exactly is in store for not only this team, but the future of Kentucky basketball under Mark Pope as full recruiting and portal cycles stack up with his culture fully established in Lexington.

Once again, the first-year coach aced another test — his biggest and most telling to date. Are there still questions? You can always nitpick to find a couple, recruiting top-five talent and winning in the postseason some of the longstanding ones that can’t be answered until those opportunities come. The wait may not be long for the former with Kentucky trending for five-star forward Caleb Wilson with a decision coming sooner rather than later. Nothing you can do about the latter until March, unfortunately.

As things stand now, though, Pope has given the told-you-so camp exactly zero ammunition to work with, and it doesn’t appear he’s planning on doing so anytime soon. Those waiting for his first misstep continue to scratch their heads as he skips and frolics through the endless landmines that come with the territory of being the head coach at Kentucky. That day will come at some point knowing the next coach that goes 40-0 will be the first, but until then, we’ll take the wins as they come with confidence the right guy is leading this program.

“We talk about it before every game, ‘This is the biggest game we’ve ever played,'” Pope told KSR ahead of the Bucknell game when asked about his team’s ability to avoid looking ahead to Duke. “… We practice this on a daily basis, about, can we just be here right now? And that’s going to also be a determining factor in how good we are as a team. Can we be present right now?”

For him, every game is the most important game before moving forward to the next. This one just so happened to be the one both fans and enemies of the program have been waiting on since the day he took the job.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, depending on which side of the aisle you stand on, he left no doubts coming out of it.