Mark Pope summons ‘Kentucky magic’ in his first night as head coach of the Wildcats
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Game day: No. 23 Kentucky 103, Wright State 62
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Monday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Wright State in Rupp Arena.
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From the opening introduction to the final score to a special moment after it was all over, the first night of the Mark Pope era couldn’t have gone much better for the new leader of Kentucky basketball.
Pope’s Wildcats defeated Wright State 103-62 in front of an announced crowd of 19,635 in Rupp Arena, the building packed to the rafters and ready to go for the official start to this new chapter in the storied program’s history.
For Pope, the captain-turned-coach of his beloved Cats, it was a storybook start.
There were only a couple of minutes left on the countdown clock when the 52-year-old bounced through the tunnel — high-fiving a few UK students on his way to the court — and hit the floor to a loud cheer from the crowd.
Not long after that — to cap the pregame introductions — Pope’s name was announced over the PA to an even louder pop, fireworks blasting off in the upper levels of the building to mark the occasion.
The aftermath left a thin fog of smoke in the Rupp rafters. Before it had cleared, the Cats were already en route to a rout.
Pope, who ran one of the best offenses in the country last season at BYU, promised more of the same right off the bat at Kentucky, and his guys delivered in the opening minutes.
Example one of his innovative offensive approach: Starting center Amari Williams hit 6-11 forward Andrew Carr with an alley-oop for the first points of the Pope era — a basket that came less than 10 seconds into the game.
Less than two minutes later, Williams — a 7-foot, 262-pounder who missed nearly all of UK’s final exhibition game with a knee injury — grabbed a defensive rebound and sprinted the other way with the ball, leading a fast break that ended with him dishing it to Otega Oweh for a dunk.
And right after that, Jaxson Robinson nailed a 3-pointer to give Kentucky a 13-5 lead. Barely three minutes had ticked off the game clock, and all five UK starters had already scored a bucket. Before the first TV timeout, the Cats took their first double-digit lead.
It was basically a nightlong celebration from there.
“Really proud of our guys,” said Pope, who dropped out of medical school 15 years ago to pursue a career in coaching instead. “I thought they came out like I would hope they would. They were so intentional to start the game. We always talk with our team about kind of operating their frontal cortex and not their limbic system. And sometimes that’s a really important balance. And these guys certainly did that well. They had exactly the right kind of makeup to start the game, and I’m proud of them.”
In other words, Pope’s Cats stuck to the script from the start. They didn’t get caught up in the hoopla of Rupp Arena — the first real game as Kentucky Wildcats for all of them — until the game was well out of hand. By that point, plenty of fun had already been had.
Kentucky led by double digits for the final 32 minutes of the game against a Wright State team that led the nation in field-goal percentage and boasted one of the best offenses in all of college basketball last season.
UK smothered the Raiders defensively, holding them to 35.3% shooting and 18.5% from 3-point range. (Wright State was also top 10 in the country in the latter stat last season.) The Cats came up with 11 steals, often turning those opportunities into points at the other end and pushing the pace whenever they got the ball. Kentucky outscored the Raiders 36-5 in fast-break points.
“Our defense turned into a bunch of offense tonight,” Pope said.
Oweh led the way with 21 points, shooting 8-for-9 from the floor and hitting all three of his 3-point attempts. He also had three steals and drew Pope’s praise for his “incredible” defense.
Koby Brea scored 18 points, going 7-for-8 from the floor and making all four of his 3-point tries. Williams, who didn’t even know if he’d play in this game until he was able to make it through Sunday’s practice, tallied 12 points and 13 rebounds. Lamont Butler had 14 points, five assists and three steals, hounding Wright State’s perimeter players with his trademark on-ball defense.
Carr and Ansley Almonor added 11 points apiece to make it six Cats in double figures, and Pope played 10 players before the second TV timeout of the first half. Brandon Garrison — the team’s backup center — had five assists. Kerr Kriisa dished out the same number.
In fact, the Cats came up with assists on 30 of their 39 made baskets. They committed only seven turnovers. They shot 60% from the floor and made 11 of 24 3-pointers as a team.
UK led by 22 at halftime. The Cats were up 30 fewer than three minutes into the second half.
The image of the night was one of a UK player not even looking at the hoop, however.
Brea, who shot 49.8% from 3-point range at Dayton last season, had already made his first three long-range attempts as a Wildcat by the time he let the fourth one go with about 8:45 left in the game.
The ball hadn’t even started its downward trajectory when Brea turned his head and started staring down the UK fans sitting courtside while dancing his way back on defense.
The ball went in. The crowd went nuts. The Cats were up 40.
Brea laughed about the scene afterward and said everyone in the locker room was still talking about it.
“Sometimes it just happens, and it gets the crowd going a little bit,” he said. “So it’s fun.”
Fun indeed. To set up that shot, Kriisa, who didn’t score all night, streaked toward the basket and passed up what would have been a wide-open layup to pass the ball to Brea instead. Kentucky’s new sharpshooter didn’t see the 3-ball go through the net. He was feeling it by that point, but he still had to look to a fan in the front row for confirmation.
“To be honest, I only do that when I know for sure that the shot’s going in,” he said. “But … after I took the shot, I was looking at him to confirm that it went in, you know? So once I saw he started cheering, I was like, ‘All right. We’re good.’”
The only scholarship players that didn’t play for Kentucky in the first half were in-state freshmen Trent Noah and Travis Perry, and as the Cats turned it into a laugher, the UK student section got in on the fun.
“We want Noah!” they started chanting at Pope, calling for the kid from Harlan to see his first action as a college player. During one of those chants, Kriisa stood up on the bench with a smile, motioning for the students to shout it even louder. Just before the final TV timeout, they got their wish, with Noah and then Perry sent to the scorer’s table to check in.
Both Kentucky boys missed a 3-pointer in the final minutes.
“I know if (they) were to hit one of those shots, the roof would have exploded,” Oweh said afterward, speaking admiringly about the love the fans showed for the Kentucky natives.
Of course, Pope isn’t originally from here, but he’s worn his Kentucky pride on his sleeve going back to his playing days, which ended with the 1996 national championship. And he’s stressed the importance of this being “Kentucky’s team” in the weeks leading up to his first season in charge.
Typically, the Cats file off the court following the postgame handshakes with the other team. On this night, they stuck around. As “My Old Kentucky Home” played, UK’s players gathered around Pope, who was given a plaque commemorating his first win as the Cats’ head coach.
Pope beamed at his players and got a kiss from his wife, Lee Anne, before heading back to the locker room. He said afterward that he would do a poor job of putting into words just how much this night meant to him.
“Because we’re just lost in the game,” Pope explained. “You know, at some point, Lee Anne and I are going to find some quiet moment to sit back and drink a soda — sometime in the next month or two, or nine months, or sometime — and I just look forward to that moment, because we’ll really take it in then. And it’s so deeply special to me.
“But right now, you know, we got work to do.”
One game down, and a long season to go, with lofty aspirations for Pope and his Wildcats.
After this game, the coach’s team couldn’t stop talking about him.
It would have made for a nice moment if Perry or Noah had hit one of those 3-pointers. It would have been easy for Kriisa to take that layup in himself instead of passing the ball to Brea for the open 3. There was a missed dunk by Butler in the first half that should’ve gone down. But if any of those scenarios had ended differently, the final score might’ve turned out different, too.
The difference of that final score — 103-62 — was 41 points. And 41 was the number Pope wore as a player at Kentucky. The coached smiled at that.
“These guys, man,” he said. “Our guys — I’m pretty sure they cooked that up. We talked about that after the game — 41. Really special to me. So that is really sweet. It’s Kentucky magic. Nothing like it.”
Next game
Bucknell at No. 23 Kentucky
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
TV: SEC Network+
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Bucknell 1-0, Kentucky 1-0
Series: First meeting
This story was originally published November 4, 2024 at 11:46 PM.
