Everything Mark Pope said after Kentucky basketball beat Troy in the NCAA Tournament

For just the second time since 2019, the Kentucky men’s basketball team has won a game in the NCAA Tournament.

The No. 3 seed Wildcats eased into the second round of the national postseason on Friday night, defeating No. 14 seed Troy 76-57 in Milwaukee.

The result gave Mark Pope his first NCAA Tournament win as a college head coach.

The Cats were led by junior guard Otega Oweh, who stuffed the stat sheet with 20 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

Against Troy, Kentucky also got 13 points from each of Koby Brea, Andrew Carr and Brandon Garrison.

Pope’s team also put together a stellar defensive effort in the win. The 57 points that UK allowed to Troy — which won the Sun Belt Conference Tournament to earn that league’s automatic bid to March Madness — was the second-best defensive effort of the season for Kentucky. This also marked the fewest points allowed by the Cats since the calendar flipped to 2025.

Next up, Kentucky will face No. 6 seed Illinois on Sunday evening in Milwaukee for a spot in the Sweet 16.

That regional semifinal opponent would either be 2-seeded Tennessee or 7-seeded UCLA. The Volunteers and Bruins are facing off in Lexington at Rupp Arena on Saturday night.

Until then, here’s everything that Pope said in his postgame press conference after Kentucky advanced past Troy in the NCAA Tournament.

Question about Collin Chandler.

Yeah. I’m going to not be overstated. I’ll try to understate this. But it is the best part of coaching. The best part of coaching is watching guys that are super committed and a ton of talent and a great work ethic and watching the process of them realize themselves a little bit.

Here he is on the biggest stage he’s ever been on in his entire life in a high-pressure game with a bunch of teammates that are hanging on by a thread health-wise. He’s like, guys, I’m ready to go get this.

What we don’t see along the way, and this is super special to me, but we don’t see all along the way are the quiet moments in his — in the Wildcat Lodge where he’s by himself wondering if this is ever going to work, and did he make the right decision.

Or the time he rolls out of a game, and the team has won a huge, huge game and he didn’t get to play so he’s battling within himself the emotion of I have to celebrate with my team, and I’m dying inside that I’m not contributing.

It’s just this beautiful process that these guys get to go through, and the guys that keep going, that keep going, that keep going, like Collin Chandler, they get this moment. And he’s got so many more moments ahead of him. He’s going to be a terrific player.

To be able to kind of bear witness to that and mentor and help these guys through this process is special. The guys that hang in there and keep going at the end of the road mean something more than any of us probably recognize because we weren’t in all those dark, doubting moments that the player’s gone through to kind of get there.

And fighting to keep your confidence and the whole process, I love it. It’s super inspiring. That’s why I’m talking about it so much.

Question about how UK handled moments when Troy, a lower-seeded team, went on runs.

It’s a battle all of us face and never totally win. We talk about being present all the time, but that’s a battle. It’s not something you do 100%. It’s every single minute, you’re trying to talk yourself off a ledge. For me also. I’m fighting so hard to keep bringing myself back to not taking on the magnitude of the history and all the things that are just too big. They all turn out to be distractions.

I’ll compliment my staff. Mikhail McLean grabbed me yesterday and didn’t cuss me out, but he settled me down. He’s like, Coach, we’ve had more time to prepare than we normally have. We’re too much in the weeds. You’ve got to breathe right now, and we’re going to be good. Just be in this moment.

That’s how a team works together. That’s how a staff works together. And so it’s a constant battle. I was really proud of our guys being able to just kind of lose themselves in this moment. We talked about it before the game, three things. It’s true for all the guys. There’s nowhere in the world they would have rather been than to be right here tonight. There is nothing they would have rather been doing than playing in this game tonight. And there’s nobody in the world they’d rather be doing it with than these guys on this team.

When you have — those moments are rare. Like if I sat anybody down and said, you know, tell me exactly your dream scenario, where you’d like to be, what you’d like to be doing, and who you’d like to be doing it with, it happens very rarely that you’re actually in it with them doing it.

And so I thought our guys did a wonderful job tonight about being fully present and understanding this is everything we want. Why would we want to miss it? Why would we want the game to get over? Why would we want to avoid it? Why would we want to fast-forward to a postgame press conference after a win?

Be here. I thought our guys did a good job with that.

Question about UK’s bench contributors.

They were important. I thought one of the biggest plays of the game was Trent’s first 3. It really mattered. It was a great play by Amari out of a tech set. Just to see it, Otega kind of broke his cut and went down the middle and sucked it in. They’re kind of coming from us anyway, and the skip pass was really terrific. I thought he had a huge impact. He was solid defensively. TP played solid minutes. Collin, of course, was spectacular.

BG, I’m telling you guys, he’s going to turn into a really, really special — all these guys will turn into really special players. But our roster right now is in tatters, and these guys are doing this just on sheer love for each other and will in terms of guys’ health right now. There’s so much going on.

These guys coming off the bench are massively important. If we’re going to have a chance in 48 hours, they’ll be just as important. Clearly, they’ve proven they’re ready to step up and do it.

Question about Kentucky having 23 assists on 28 made shots against Troy.

It was ball protection. It was guys being diligent about being aggressive. It has to do with being super aggressive. The Troy defense is terrific. They’re a great defensive team. They’re incredibly disruptive. They’re the No. 7 steals team in the country. They’re really disruptive, changing defenses all the time. Everything from I-3 to a 3-2 to a tandem zone to a press to, you know, to 12 being a rover and running around and making unconventional defensive plays.

So the first thing is our guys being really aggressive. We were aggressive to two feet. They were trying to make a place for their teammates. Against a team that’s disruptive, aggressive like that, that’s actually the recipe and our guys answered the bell really well.

Ton of credit to Troy, though. A great team that’s had a great season. Scott does an unbelievable job. Those guys fought like crazy. They’re a really, really, really good team. They’re a terrific team.

Question about Mark Pope coaching in Milwaukee, where he played professionally, and earning his first NCAA Tournament win as a head coach.

If you indulge me, I’ll give you a short long answer. I love this city. Lee Ann and I, like, really in a lot of ways began our life here. My oldest daughter, Ella, was born here. I got to play for George Karl on one of the best Bucks teams in the last 30, 40 years with incredible teammates I love so much.

I was a terrible player so I was a guest on the team, but it was special. And I think about, if you’ll let me, I think about this Milwaukee tradition that I got to be part of. Super important to me.

Junior Bridgeman, who is a legend here and also a legend in the state of Kentucky, he passed away just a few days ago, and I don’t know if there’s a better representative in the world of what you can — on the trajectory that basketball can set you in for the rest of your life.

I talk to my guys all the time about, man, I hope every one of you plays in the NBA, and I hope it’s like the 10th-most interesting thing you do in your life, the 10th-most meaningful thing you do in your life.

You talk about great human beings, Junior Bridgeman very special. I know everybody in Milwaukee and the state of Kentucky is mourning his loss.

It means a lot to be able to be here. We still haven’t got any Kopp’s custard, and I’m disappointed we haven’t made that happen yet, but we have other business. Milwaukee and the Bucks are special to us. To be here and be competing is pretty great.

Another question about Pope winning his first NCAA Tournament game as a head coach.

Well, it means that Mitch is not going to fire me until Saturday or Sunday or whenever we play next.

Lee Ann and Shay and I and our family have this unimaginable opportunity to come try and do our best to represent this one-of-one program for us. That means a lot to us, the opportunity to do it. The trick it’s not about us at all. It’s just not. It’s not. So I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about our guys, where this is their one shot to do this. Most of our guys wearing a Kentucky jersey. And I think about BBN, and it means — when you understand how much it means to our fans and this community, that’s the stuff that’s really important to us. It just, you know, we just are blessed to have a chance to be here and do everything we can to help it work.

With that said, talk about this BBN community, I heard this. Am I allowed to say this? So you think about tough things. The great Vernon Hatton, he’s a legend, all-time legend at University of Kentucky. He passed away just before the game. I just heard that after the game.

I had a chance to go spend some time with him a couple weeks ago, and maybe we spent — Mark Hill and I got to go. I don’t know if we spent an hour with him and listened to stories. I could have spent day after day after day. What an amazing trailblazer he is and a great member of the BBN community and what a great legendary basketball player he was. He was also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a trailblazer in the game of basketball for me and Kentucky in that way.

It’s just an example. I mean, he just is a beautiful human being and gave so much to this state and this community. So we’ll mourn his loss also. That’s BBN. There’s a whole lot of goodness.

Question about how it feels to win an NCAA Tournament game as a head coach, compared to as a player.

Sorry I’m giving you terrible answers. I wish I had something for you. It means something to me because we’re doing our job. It means something to me and to the guys because that means we get at least 48 hours more together.

When this comes to an end — hopefully it doesn’t come to an end for three more weeks. When it does, it’s going to be super painful for me because I get to be around these incredibly special guys that have literally given everything under massive duress. And what these guys have overcome just trying to actually get on to the court is pretty special. So we’re trying to do this as long as we can.

This story was originally published March 21, 2025 at 11:34 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