No Lie: Evidence of Mark Pope's Bloody Hand from a Fiery Kentucky Locker Room

Kentucky has lost four of its last five games. Criticism isn’t hard to find during a stretch like that. Some of the loudest as of late is that Mark Pope is too soft, so his team is. Critics will tell you that in order to get the team to play harder, he has to yell louder.

On Wednesday night’s Mark Pope Show, the Kentucky head coach actually took a call about the matter. Even though it’s not his normal standard operating procedure, he gets fired up and loses his temper from time to time.

Pope described those moments as getting “white hot.” A well-placed flaming, white-hot tirade can effectively motivate players if used properly.

“There may or may not have been some completely destroyed furniture in the locker room recently — a little Coach P, maybe. That’s just part of it,” Pope said. “It’s got to be for a purpose. It just can’t be an emotional release, that’s not the most productive thing. We try and make sure it’s always something that’s really, really personal and not just indulgent, like an indulgent emotional outburst. It’s not functional.”

Even though he did not pinpoint the event from the double-digit loss to Ole Miss, it’s pretty clear it happened at halftime when the Wildcats trailed by 23 points. During the radio show, a fan noted that he had some blood on his wrist. We have video evidence from his postgame press conference of the laceration on his hand from the apparent locker room tirade. Shout out to Rare Rookies for putting the spotlight on it in slow motion.

When you watch the entire 10-minute conversation with the press, you’ll notice that Mark Pope keeps his right hand under the table until the very last moment. You’ll see the cut on his hand as he leaves the table.

Pope said there was some broken furniture. Do we think the laceration was from a broken chair? That looks like the kind of cut you might get from a broken clipboard, but I’m no expert.

This is a nice reminder that just because you don’t see or hear Mark Pope screaming at his players on the ESPN broadcast, it doesn’t mean he’s not giving them a hard time behind closed doors.

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