‘Terrific night of basketball.’ Mark Pope talks about his Wildcats after another big win.

Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats continue to roll.

Now ranked No. 9 in this week’s edition of the AP Top 25 poll, UK improved to 4-0 on the season with a leisurely 97-68 home win against Lipscomb on Tuesday night at Rupp Arena.

The Cats only had 10 assists on their 34 made shots, but UK ran out to an early 15-4 lead over the Bisons and never looked back.

Fifth-year guard Jaxson Robinson led the way for UK with 20 points, and he was one of four Kentucky players who put forth a double-digit scoring effort.

Another overmatched opponent will be in Rupp Arena on Friday night when UK hosts Jackson State, currently 0-4 before a Wednesday game at Western Kentucky.

Pope has his team playing quality basketball at the moment, and that doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.

Following Tuesday’s win over Lipscomb, Pope — whose parents were in attendance for the game — spoke with media members.

Here’s everything Pope said after another Kentucky victory.

Opening statement:

OK. Terrific night of basketball. This Lipscomb team is really good. They are really disciplined. They somehow managed to push the ball really hard in transition and then grind it out at half court, that’s a hard thing to put together and they are incredibly well coached.

Lennie has been doing a great job for a long time. He’s a terrific, terrific coach. And you can see it. I don’t know if we’ll play teams that are this committed and disciplined to the way they play very much. It posed a real challenge. I thought our guys were great, I thought they really competed. For the most part, I thought we had pretty good results.

Question about the potential for Kentucky to have a let down following the win over Duke.

You know, it’s interesting. We had this conversation earlier today with the broadcast team. We don’t stress, like we don’t get nervous, we don’t worry because it doesn’t actually work. You know, sometimes we think if a team has a letdown after a big win, it’s like, oh man, if the coach had just thought about the possibility of it being a letdown and prepared this team for no letdown, it wouldn’t have happened. What happens is we all just overkill, right?

We just start pushing that narrative so hard with our team. We don’t actually do it at all. We are always going to be focused on what we need to do. And so, we really work hard. It’s human nature to worry about that a little bit. We really work hard to focus on what we are trying to do. Our guys are really hungry to get better, we are hungry to become a great team. We don’t have a lot of time to do it. So, you know, the last game was over and it was kind of onto like, how can we get better? How can we get better? That’s the only thing we talk about.

And the biology of that, the neuroscience of that is 100% in support of that. Right? You know, we are not going to focus on what we don’t want to have happen, we are going to focus on what we do want to have happen. And our guys have received that really well. We did not spend much time on that at all, and we won’t, that’s not the way we do it. That doesn’t mean we won’t ever have bad results. It just means that we are going to always focus on what we are trying to do and we are going to try to be laser focused on that. We are not going to spend a lot of time thinking about what we do not want to have happen.

Question about the development of Jaxson Robinson.

Yeah, I mean I’m so impressed with Jaxson Robinson. What’s really interesting is he had a terrific game against Duke, that’s the weird part, he actually played really well.

He came up with massive defensive stops down the stretch that were game determining stops that we really needed. There is a couple of things that we were really impressed about Jaxson and his growth and his maturity is that he wasn’t having a huge impact on the game in the scorebook offensively, although he was having a huge impact gravity wise. It wasn’t the payoff of the scorebook and all of the things. He refused to let that drain his defensive intensity and energy and energy towards his team.

Some of my favorite pictures coming out of that game, we get out of these pictures coming at us. It’s like Jaxson Robinson, you know, Andrew Carr gets an and-one and Jaxson is the first guy to be there, just like — screaming, and his veins are popping out of his neck and every bit of emotion is there. The ability he has as a veteran player to stay in the moment, in the game and care about his teammates and still perform at a great level defensively even when he’s not putting up 20 or 30 is a massive — it’s what you dream about coaching, right? It’s going to serve him well this year and is going to serve him great in the NBA. It’s been really inspiring to be able to witness his growth.

I don’t know how many times we are going to get to coach players for three years anymore. It’s been unbelievable to coach him for two years and four games and I love it, I’m really proud of him.

Question about Koby Brea.

I thought he was great on the glass tonight. It was just seven rebounds, but it was challenged rebounds, physical rebounds, I was really proud of him for that. He ended up with some switched mismatches that he handled really well. I still think he’s got a huge amount of game in his tank on the defensive end in isolation and handling guys one-on-one.

Actually, Koby is interesting because sometimes my eyes tricked me and at the end of the game he’s actually got a better defensive package than I thought I saw.

With him, I always have to go back to the numbers and just check with my eyes right now as unlearning him as a defensive player. I also think he has a chance to be a terrific playmaker. He’s still learning to get off two feet. He had one opportunity where he shot fake, and drove baseline right in front of our bench where he could see the bottom kind of was there and he bailed out of it. I actually had the confidence in him, I would love him to carve out space, get his shoulder into the hips that he just turned, carve out some space and get all the way to two feet, because he’s really good in there. I would like him to grow in that sense about being able to probe more downhill, more confidently, more off-the-wall creating space.

So, I would like him to continue to be a really dangerous, huge energy cutter. He probably doesn’t manufacture as much as he can yet. He’s such a lethal shooter and teams are going to overplay, and overplay, and overplay more and he can really kill teams as a cutter and that’s a place in this game where he’s growing.

So, there is a lot of growth for him. He’s putting together a pretty fun product, right? It’s pretty fun. It’s hard, you know. We talked about it. Lipscomb came in having played 34 possessions of zone at a 0.511 points for possession. That’s ridiculous, guys, that’s so good. And so they kind of saved it and went to it in the second half and it was like, you’ve got Koby Brea running around shooting 3s, it’s like we can’t do that.

I think we were almost two points per possession, over two points per possession against the zone. He is just a fun player to coach and a beautiful human being.

Question about Lamont Butler’s ability to hit shots.

Well, we don’t spend time relying on guys making shots, we rely on them taking them.

We were good in a lot of areas on the stat sheet but we only got up 25 3s, that’s not us, that’s not actually who we are supposed to be. Lamont is going to be that way all year. He’s unbelievably solid. If you notice, he shot the ball great for us all camp, he shot it all summer great. He’s a terrific shooter especially what he’s doing now so well is when guys go into ball screens he’s not rushed, he’s actually coming off hard and he’s stopping and it really finding his balance. He knows, right now in our scheme he knows if he stops and gets on balance to shoot it and they close out late, he can play the rifle game and he’s devastating in the rifle game especially when someone is close, because now they are out of the position they have tried to be in the scout.

It actually distorts everything you tried to prep in the scout coming to him that he can do that play behind, get his balance and if they close get his rifle game and he ends up playing downhill. He is very confident with that package, he’s always got it at his disposal. He’s getting better and better at it. I was actually pleased with him getting downhill in transition and winning the gap, that was a huge thing and this is a good steals team and I thought he made two incredible plays downhill that I thought were really special where he protected the ball.

Question about this Kentucky team being the first in school history to make at least 10 3-pointers in each of the first four games of the season.

Well, when you say that, the first thing I’m disappointed. How did we not make 10 3s a game in ‘96? What are we doing, guys? I’m going to call the boys, like boys, what are we doing?

So that is my first reaction. The second reaction is that’s great. We’re going to have games where we don’t make 10 3s. I’m more worried about the attempts, right? We’ve got to keep pushing the attempts. You know, I’m nitpicking because our guys played terrific tonight. I thought they were great.

We only had 10 assists, that’s not us, the ball, you know give credit to Lipscomb, they were really out of help a lot in this game. It ended up with a lot of guys having open shots where they didn’t have to earn it for each other, it was just standing there open and you know, we shot 48% from 3. I would like to just get more of them. But I’m proud of that, it’s a really important part of our team. I would be more excited if we were at 35 3-point attempts a game, but I will take the 10 makes for sure.

Question about how Kentucky has limited turnovers.

Yeah, I mean, the turnovers is a massive issue for us. I think we had six or seven in the first half. I think we had six, right? And that was not, we weren’t really pleased about that but I thought in the second half we were much, much better. You know, turnover game is a huge, it’s just massively important to the way we play. And we believe that the more aggressive we are, the more attack mode we are, the less turnovers we’re going to have.

And then the concepts we’ve talked about altogether several times, about two hands, two feet, and driving lines and keeping KDA’s and all of the concepts that we focus on, simple plays winning gaps was a huge point of emphasis tonight.

If you watched the Western Kentucky game, these guys were terrorizing Western Kentucky on drives by getting gap rate steals, right? That’s a huge point of emphasis for our guys. They did that really, really well. You know, us being low on the turnover space is, you know, what happens when we are really aggressive and when we stay aggressive and when our guys are actually in the decision-making mindset rather than the emotional mindset, which we work hard to get to.

And so, I’m proud of that, it’s really important. We need to be an under-10 turnover team and that’s got to be a staple of who we are. We’ve been there the last two games and we weren’t against Bucknell and I actually compare this game a little bit to Bucknell because of the changing defense. They didn’t do it a lot but they did a little bit of changing defense. When you face a team that’s doing that sometimes slows you down and it slowed us down against Bucknell. It didn’t slow us down at all tonight. I thought our guys responded well to that.

That’s a lot of stuff. But yes, keeping those turnovers under 10 is really important, the way we do it is really important how we play.

Another question about Lamont Butler and his shooting ability.

He is an elite-level shooter. Listen, and please don’t get me in trouble for what I’m saying. Because Dutch is one of the great coaches in all of college basketball and Lamont’s run at San Diego State was brilliant. I mean, he couldn’t have been any better. They couldn’t have been any better, I mean that was a national championship game.

But Lamont is going to be a way better shooter in our system because we shoot, that’s what we do. It’s a different style, our emphasis are different it doesn’t mean they’re better or worse, it’s just different. Lamont is an elite-level shooter. I mean, Lamont shot, I mean, he shot great all summer. He’s shooting it great this season. You know, I have every expectation he is going to shoot it great. He actually finishes every shot, his balance is terrific, he’s judicial about the ones that he takes, he works hard to get his feet before his hands.

You know, all of the concepts we care about in shooting, he shoots it great. So, he’s a dangerous guy that way. You know, it makes the game easier for us when people go under on him because he’s going to make shots and he’s also going to be really smart about it. I don’t, you know, it’s just who he is. There is no prognosticating, that’s just who he is as a player. He is really good.

Question about UK’s defense.

There were some things I loved in the first half. First of all, we kept them under 39% barely. We tried desperately to try to get them over 39% in the last five minutes, but we hung in there and got them to 38.8% field-goal percentage. That’s really important, that’s our mark, so I think we are four for four on that stat.

I thought we were there on the catch the whole night really well minus the pick and pop situations with their 5 men, which was kind of a calculated decision on our part that worked in our favor. So I was happy about challenging shots for sure. Both inside the three and outside. I was really proud of us in the first half we only gave up one back door and this is a great cutting team.

Actually, they are almost 10%, almost 10%, either 9 or 11 % of their possessions are cuts, which is really high. Guys, you don’t see that a lot. And it’s not dunker spot cuts.

This is like real, real cuts, that way they are similar to us. We only gave up one in the entire first half, I was really proud of that. And our guys were actually able to handle, you know, they punish you because their scheme is you either have to race through handoffs and ball screens to get over top, or if you try to beat ‘em to it, then it’s a backdoor situation so our guys train tracks concepts were great tonight in the first half, I was really proud of that.

We only gave up three offensive rebounds in the first half, although they were only sending one guy. But still, that’s a good number for us. So there’s a lot to be really pleased about us on the defensive end. I would like us to, you know, we had some stretches in the second half where were not as laser focused as we want to be.

I’d like us to really develop a standard where it doesn’t matter what timer scores, that we are locked in on that, doesn’t matter who’s on the floor. We are locked in defensively the whole time. For the most part, I’m really proud of the guys defensive effort tonight. Thanks guys, have a great night.

This story was originally published November 19, 2024 at 11:26 PM.

Cameron Drummond

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-242-5257

Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas. Support my work with a digital subscription