Mark Pope explains what led to Kentucky basketball’s blowout home loss to Auburn

Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats suffered a major setback Saturday afternoon, losing 94-78 at home to No. 1 Auburn.

The Tigers clinched at least a share of the SEC regular-season championship with the win. That became an outright league title when Alabama lost on a buzzer-beater at Tennessee later Saturday.

Auburn led by double digits for the entire second half of its win over Kentucky. The game’s final 16-point margin of victory was tied for the sixth-worst loss that UK has ever suffered inside Rupp Arena.

It was Auburn’s first win in Lexington since January 1988.

In addition to the on-court struggles, Pope said afterward that fifth-year guard Jaxson Robinson is out for the season for Kentucky due to a right wrist injury.

All in all, it was a rough day for the UK program.

Following the heavy defeat to Auburn, Pope met with reporters at Rupp Arena to recap the game and UK’s ongoing injury issues.

Here’s everything that Pope said.

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Opening statement

Auburn played great basketball tonight. They’ve been playing great basketball all season long. Bruce has done an unbelievable job, not just assembling, but growing and fitting together the pieces on their team. So, congratulations to them.

We are pretty disappointed with our performance. Will take questions.

Question about Kentucky’s perimeter defense against Auburn.

Man, we really struggled with that. Give credit to Auburn. The first six minutes they had back-to-back 3s off the glass. Sometimes there is a little bit of that involved, but we certainly didn’t ring the bell. Schematically we didn’t. Individually we didn’t.

That’s a place where we were very poor tonight. We’ve actually been making strides, but we regressed a little bit tonight.

Question about Kentucky turning the ball over to begin the second half.

Yeah, it was really unfortunate. It was more of a manifestation of I think the stress that we were feeling than feeling sped up.

Because none of them were forced. We were just dribbling the ball out of bounds. And that’s, actually you can give credit to Auburn for that. They got us in a hole and you can put the blame for that on me. I wasn’t able to get the guys to a place where we could just kind of be present in the execution of the moment.

That’s what happens when you get under duress and you, you know, you are carrying around baggage. You have really inexplicable series of plays like that. That was a pretty devastating run for us, for sure.

Question about Kentucky’s energy level for the Auburn game.

I would love to make excuses on that. That ultimately falls on my shoulders. Credit goes to Auburn also. They’ve done this, you know they’re a good team. They made really hard shots tonight and their switching was a de-energizer for us and we didn’t respond to it well at all.

You know, we kind of let frustration mount a little bit and it was probably a whole slew of excuses. Late travel, late game, all the things with a quick turnaround. At the end of the day, that’s just what you deal with as a basketball player. I failed to lead our team today to have the energy that is required for us to come out and be great.

It’s not a lack of desire. It was a whole cocktail of some energy miscues, some being sped up miscues. Some terrific shot making from Auburn. All put together resulted in a really, really terrible day for us.

Question about Auburn’s defensive approach and why UK didn’t take or make many 3-pointers.

First, the most important thing was the only time we had any flow to the game was when we had some pace and we just gave up on a pace game. We gave up on it full court. I can’t tell you how many times we grabbed a rebound then we’re frozen there. That’s the exact opposite of the team that we are, that we built.

Clearly, we are dealing with some complicated rotation changes. But that’s where our life is and that’s where we’re great and that’s why we have been one of the top offensive teams in the country. We failed to actually push that, you know, we just, I don’t know, actually is the answer. Again, it’s probably a combination of things. Fatigue, changing lineups, the frustration of the moment. But when we actually push the ball, we got some good flow into the game for moments.

And then we just didn’t. That wasn’t really something that Auburn was doing on possessions. It was us just stopping. And then in the half court a lot of credit goes to Auburn. They were switching all of our flow stuff at our guys. We failed to be forceful enough to make the plays that we need to make. Again, it was a combination of things.

Question about the health of fifth-year guards Lamont Butler and Jaxson Robinson.

Yeah, the best thing about tonight was Lamont got through the game. That’s the best thing. Every game and every play he gets through is better. He got beat up on some screens and he still made it out alive. I thought he was probably our brightest spot tonight in terms of his ability to get downhill and get to two feet and make plays and have a little bit of defensive presence. He was probably the best thing for us.

Like I said, every play he gets through is really positive because he’s on his way back. He’s got two more games to really get to the elite level that he’s played at for most of the season. So I’m really happy he’s making progress.

Jax is, we kind of came to the final conclusion last night that he’s going to get surgery. So, he is going Wednesday to the world specialist to have surgery on his wrist. He’s got a torn subsheath to his ECU tendon so what’s happening is it’s lipping out and when he went down, you know, we kind of knew that he was going to need surgery, but he just wanted so badly to play. He rehabbed it and had an injection to try to make it functional.

And then he was doing okay and then he went down the first half at Oklahoma. So, it’s in a groove and there’s a sheath around it that holds it in place. That’s just ripped, the distal side of it, I think it’s the distal side of it, is just ripped a little bit and so now it’s coming out of the groove and after the hit it actually relocated it a little more.

There’s just no way that he’s going to be able to play. The good news is that he will go have the surgery with, literally, the world’s No. 1 surgeon doing this particular procedure.

It’s a three-month till 100% full recovery. He will be good to go the first of June, the end of May and continue on with his great basketball career.

Question about how Auburn’s length and athleticism on defense distinguishes the Tigers from other top teams.

Right now, they are the best team in the country. You know, they punished us tonight, for sure. It’s a real credit to their guys, to their players, and a real credit to coach Pearl and his staff because they do a lot of switching on the fly. There is a lot of communication on the fly.

And, you know, there were only small moments in the game where we were able to take advantage of that and they communicate so well together and they have so much makeup ability that it makes it really difficult. And they also play with tremendous energy. They have length. You know, they are playing elite level basketball. So, just a ton of credit to those guys. Thanks guys.

This story was originally published March 1, 2025 at 7:06 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