Kentucky keeps falling behind in the first half of big games. How will Mark Pope fix it?
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Game day: Georgia 82, No. 6 Kentucky 69
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Georgia in Athens, Georgia.
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The best moments of this, still young, Kentucky basketball season have been born from bad stretches of play by the Wildcats.
UK has played seven high-major opponents in 2024-25. Against five of them, the Wildcats have dug themselves a double-digit deficit in the first half.
Of course, these early setbacks have set the stage for some enthralling comebacks.
The Cats trailed Duke by as many as 10 points during the first half in Atlanta, only to rally for a Champions Classic win that gave Mark Pope his first signature victory as UK’s coach.
About a month later during a Saturday night showdown with Gonzaga in Seattle, Kentucky trailed by as many as 16 points in the first half. What followed has gone down in UK basketball lore: A second-half reversal that ended with UK scoring an overtime win.
On Saturday in Rupp Arena, it was more of the same. Kentucky went down by 11 points in the opening minutes to top-10 Florida before Pope’s team roared back for a high-energy, high-scoring win to begin SEC play.
These Wildcats clearly like to play with fire.
But fire burns, too.
A Christmas week humbling by Ohio State in New York City saw UK go down by 10 points in the first half, an early hole that proved too much to overcome.
And it was that script that played out Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, where Georgia handed No. 6 Kentucky an 82-69 loss in UK’s first SEC road test of the season.
Kentucky held a slender lead in the game’s opening minutes, before the teams traded the lead for about a nine-minute stretch of game time. Then — in what’s become a disturbing trend for Kentucky against high-major teams this season — Georgia established itself before the half.
The Bulldogs outscored the Wildcats by 13 points over the final 6:38 of the first half, with a 3-pointer from UGA freshman sensation Asa Newell — who finished with a team-high 17 points and seven rebounds — capping things. Newell’s 3-pointer swished home as the buzzer sounded, giving the Bulldogs a 13-point halftime advantage that mirrored the game’s final margin.
For the second time this season, a lackluster first half showing went on to burn the Cats.
“The second 10-minute stretch (of first halves) has been really problematic for us,” Pope said Tuesday postgame. “The first 10 minutes are OK, (we are) in there, guys are starting out well. And then it’s that second 10 minutes and maybe some little rotational stuff. Maybe we’re being a little over sensitive to foul stuff. You know, maybe it’s where the issues in the game are really starting to seep in.”
It’s not a surprise that UK was punished for going down double digits in the first half to Georgia. The strength of the SEC this season means Kentucky won’t be able to get away with such a thing against many, if any, league opponents.
UK’s coaches know this.
“It’s something that we’re super conscious of,” Pope added.
But the fact that this trend — UK failing to answer the bell in the first half — has persisted should itself be an alarm bell to the Wildcats.
“We’ve definitely got to continue to match the energy of the teams that we play,” fifth-year guard Lamont Butler — who led UK with 20 points against Georgia — told the Herald-Leader. “Playing Kentucky is a staple game for everybody. Everyone’s trying to go play their best game. They’re coming with energy and physicality, so we’ve got to match that ... especially in first halves so we don’t have big deficits.”
So what is it? Why is Kentucky struggling to put together a solid 20 minutes of basketball to begin games this season?
Pope is still searching for an answer.
“We’re doing some deep dives into, like, tandems that work on the floor, but there’s something in there that’s just been troublesome for us,” said Pope, who specified that it’s the 12:00 to 4:00 segment of first halves that he’s seen UK struggle with.
“I don’t know if it’s scheme, flow, lineup. We’re still digging into that. We’ll find (it).”
Looking at that segment specifically — the eight-minute stretch from the 12:00 mark to the 4:00 mark — of first halves this season reveals that Pope, at least, has identified the problem.
Kentucky has lost the 12:00 to 4:00 segment of the first half in six of its seven high-major games.
Duke won this span 19-10. Clemson won it 16-11. Gonzaga outscored UK by a 25-20 margin over this segment. Louisville came out with a 15-12 run. Ohio State had a 12-7 advantage. UGA created separation with a 24-17 scoring spurt.
“Sometimes it can be dysfunctional,” Butler said when asked if lineup pairings and rotations play a role in UK’s poor first-half displays. “But we’ve just got to continue to work on it and everybody just needs to be ready to play.”
Saturday against the Gators was the only time against a high-major team this season that the Cats have won that segment. UK had 25 points to Florida’s 14 during the stretch.
“I thought we made great progress, you know, last game, and it was hard for us this game,” Pope admitted Tuesday.
Of course, each game is a singular entity, as are the factors that go into deciding the outcome.
On Tuesday, Pope and his players pointed to fouls and offensive rebounds as two major reasons for the result.
Georgia shot 19 more free throws than Kentucky (making 14 more from the foul line) and the Bulldogs grabbed seven more rebounds than UK.
“We got out-rebounded. So I feel like that affected us, but other than that I feel like we played great,” sophomore big man Brandon Garrison told the Herald-Leader after scoring a season-high 13 points.
But whatever the afflicting area may be, it always seems to strike at the same time for these Cats.
And in an unforgiving SEC — which now has 13 teams inside the top 50 of the KenPom rankings — a continuation of this bad Kentucky basketball habit will only toughen an already arduous task for Pope and his players.
Next game
No. 6 Kentucky at No. 14 Mississippi State
When: 8:30 p.m. EDT Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 12-3 (1-1 SEC), Mississippi State 14-1 (2-0)
Series: Kentucky leads 103-21
Last meeting: Kentucky won 91-89 on Feb. 27, 2024, in Starkville, Mississippi
This story was originally published January 8, 2025 at 8:25 AM.
