‘A chance to be great.’ What Mark Pope said after UK basketball’s win over Purdue

Everything Kentucky coach Mark Pope said after the Wildcats’ 78-65 exhibition win Friday over Purdue, the nation’s preseason No. 1 team:

Mark Pope: All of the partisans out there just know that was not the media (applauding). That was just a fan, but I like – the media, if you guys want to clap too. I was listening to a church sermon, it was super powerful, and the speaker said ‘If you know, you know.’ And he was talking about, of course, the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this idea, if you know, you know is something we kind of talk about with our team. … We have a long way to go. We have so much work to do. But in terms of one night for these guys to actually be in this for each other, that’s gonna be the key to this team. As much as we can just stay in this for each other, we have a chance to be a good team. So I’m super proud of them.

Q: I saw Malachi 2 years ago in the state final four, and several of us saw him, and the impression was like ‘Wow, he’s soft. He’s big, but he’s soft.’ And you see what you see tonight. What happened?

Pope: Yeah, I’m really proud of him. I’ve got to know his family really well. His mom is incredible. And his brother Michael has oriented his whole life to take care of his brother. And Malachi himself has just made great changes. I talked about this this summer, when I was at USA (Basketball) and saw him compete, I was just blown away also, because I saw the same player that you (did). I wouldn’t use the word soft, but I would just say he was kind of a one-position guy, wasn’t rebounding out of his position, wasn’t rim protecting outside of his position. He’s just made incredible progress, and that’s a real tribute to his family and himself. But he’s got a chance to grow to a really special player. He’s got a lot of work to do. He’s got so much growth ahead of him, but he’s got a chance to have a massive impact on this game.

Q: You mentioned all preseason how important these exhibition games are, even though they don’t count toward anything. What something you’ve learned about your team that you can help use to carry you through the rest of a tough preconference schedule?

Pope: I was really proud of us in the first half offensively, because we weren’t very good, but when we weren’t very good, we tried to solve it by being us. We had seven cut assists and seven screen assists on the night. And so there were several, several stymied late possessions in the first half where we didn’t just try and, like, go fix it the way these guys have always fixed it their whole life. They fixed it our way. We had stretched in the second half where we got away from that a little bit, which is understandable right now, but I was really proud of that. It’s a good sign for us.

Q: Where has Jasper made maybe the biggest stride over these past few weeks, especially? And then how do you kind of channel all of the things that he can do into one focused product?

Pope: I’m really proud of Jasper, because he is trying so hard to learn what we do. He’s got a very unique game. He’s got a really unique skill set. And he has committed himself to trying to do what we do and then letting that part of him that he brings to the game come out through it rather than just going to what he does. And that’s why he’s growing so much so fast. He’s clearly a really talented player who’s got a huge future, but he’s going to play well because he’s trying to do this the way we do it. It’s going to make him look good and certainly did tonight.

Q: You had 10 players tonight play more than 15 minutes, and (Otega Oweh and Jayden Quiantance) weren’t on the floor tonight. How are you gonna find minutes for all these guys when everybody gets back?

Pope: I actually didn’t think we played as hard consistently as we can. I thought one of the things that was effective – this Purdue team is great. They’re the No. 1 team in the country; they’re gonna be unbelievable. And they’re on the road. None of us have even installed most of what we do yet. So there’s all those things. But, you know, they didn’t shoot the ball particularly well tonight, and I’m hoping that part of it was just that there was somewhat of a relentless pressure or pace to the game. And so I actually felt like we didn’t play as hard as we’re gonna have to play to win consistently. So I kind of was looking at the bench like, ‘I need fresh bodies.’ So we’ll continue to work on our conditioning. But it’s a matter of, like, how hard, how much pressure can we exert on this game every single second of the game? And that will help us defensively. It will help us offense, because it breaks open things. Just the fatigue and the unrelenting pressure. I was sitting in the office with Lee, just after I met with the the team, and, just looking at the boxscore, and I said, ‘Man, this feels like my ‘96 team in terms of just point distribution.’ Can you do that in 25-26? Like, can we actually pull it off, where we have guys that care so much about each other, so much about Kentucky, that they’re willing to do this? We’re gonna see. But if we can do it, it’s a really fun to play.

Q: Collin Chandler only had two points, but led the team in plus-minus with 15. What does that say about how he contributed without scoring?

Pope: Yeah, was the highlight of the whole game for me. I would give him the MVP of the game. That’s the defining feature of who – if this team wants to do something historic, that’s what we need. And we need to champion it and we need to take pride in it and we need to be like, ‘Yes, that was me.’ And he was unbelievable. You know, he played 15 minutes, he was a plus-15, I think. That’s amazing. He was a plus-one per minute. That’s a ridiculous racial for anything over six or seven minutes of play. He had a ridiculously spectacular dunk. I have so much confidence in him to make the right decision on offense and so much confidence in him to be incredibly defensively sound with energy. You have guys like that, it just makes you feel good as a coach, because good things happen when he’s on the floor. You know, the dunk was spectacular, but he had two elite-level wait in the corner, full-speed cuts where he hit the roll late that just broke it open. Our bigs finally started rolling. Like, the whole first half, one of the things that we were stuck on was, we couldn’t get our bigs to roll. They would just, I think, partly some fatigue and just the head-spinning to the deal, but he really got us started, and then everyone else saw how that felt. The roll guys and the live-ball ballhandlers. And then you have Mo making that play. And you got Jasper making that play, and DA making that play and it was contagious. He had a massive impact on the game.

Q: You mentioned in the offseason, you thought Jasper, Otega, Denzel, and Collin could be, like, the next guys up when it comes to running point, and they combine for 10 assists and four turnovers tonight. How did you feel like that quartet stepped in for Jaland?

Pope: I thought they were good. Purdue is a unique team. We are going to see very different challenges from other teams. This is a very unique team. Their DNA is not to really put a ton of pressure on the ball. They beat you in other ways. I thought our guys, for the most part handled it well. I thought our bigs had a chance to grow in that sense. BG had a couple elite-level reads where he was getting to the second and third cutter that were elite -level plays. Then he got carried away a couple of times. Malachi had a really important play for him as they were really trying to press and get out to the wings and we were encouraging our bigs to… go attack the no-gap pressure, and he did, and I was really proud of him because he got all the way down to the rim and was bullied all the way down to the rim and finished with a nice left-hand finish. I think Mo igniting the break was really solid a couple of times. I thought Jela, even though he’s not allowed to dribble, he actually ignited the break a couple of times and was really effective making the simple play.

Q: Malachi’s big dunk came after a pretty poor 3-point attempt. Jasper got a good steal in the first half after giving up a turnover. For you guys to accomplish what you are wanting to accomplish this year, how important is it for your young guys, your freshman, are you able to respond to that adversity?

Pope: We must have said ‘Next play’ 10 times in the huddle before we walked out on the floor to start the game. It’s just really important. When you are trying to – like, this idea of coming wave after wave after wave and keeping the pressure on, there’s going to be mistakes in the game. And it’s just, if we do this right, the way that this team is built to try to compete, kind of using what strength is, then we just have to move on to the next play. And I thought those guys did that brilliantly. In fact, I thought a bunch of guys did it. Kam shot a 25-foot shot, 24-foot shot 32 feet, and then came back and banged an impossible shot, moving onto the next one. We had a bunch of plays like that where guys just moved on to the next play pretty well. That’s going to be important for us all year long. We are going to have to get better and better at it.

Q: What did you also think about Mo Dioubate’s physicality?

Pope: I do think there’s going to be a lot of BBB that Mo Dioubate is their favorite player. I mean, he just plays with all of his guts spilling out all over the floor. He just plays hard; he just plays hard. He’s got a lot of fans in my own family right now that say ‘We love this Mo Dioubate,’ and I do too. I thought he was great tonight.

Q: What can you take away from this game with the lack of defense?

Pope: Listen, I think this is to teams that have traditionally been elite-level offensive teams. I think that our navigation through traffic was poor today. But that’s a credit to what Purdue does. They wait, they cut hard, they set up cuts and they screen hard and they’re big bodies. Those three guys are big, big-bodied guys. But we have to get way better at navigating traffic away from the ball. It’s really, really important. I thought we did that poorly. We’ve had a tough time guarding ourselves and we had a tough time being there on the catch. We were trying to open the bigs so that we could take a best route, and we were pretty stubborn with it. I felt like we were cutting the angle off the first initial screen; I thought were doing a poor job cutting the angle. You kind of need a 270-degree kind of cut to actually get under so you can be there on the other side. When we finally did it, Loyer kind of pulled up behind and it was an off-rhythm shot. It was different for him. Those adjustments are things that are really important and we have to get better at. I thought our third defender was really inconsistent on ball screens. I would like to get to the point to where we are switching way more. I did think that our monster was effective tonight – sorry, our double-team in the post was effective today minus the fouls. This is exactly what it is; we’ve been practicing for three and a half weeks, four weeks, four and a half weeks. That is what this is. It is a preseason game. It was probably the most fun exhibition game I’ve ever been a part of. I know BBN was totally frustrated about playing the No. 1-ranked team in the country in an exhibition, but I like it, so you guys are going to have to live with it.

Q: How valuable is a game like this for small situations like at the end of the half? There’s four seconds left, an out of bounds play for Purdue?

Pope: Neither of us are clean yet. Neither of us are clean at all. It was like, BH sat on the bench for 19 minutes and 56 seconds and then to be able to put him in there where his length is ridiculous. This is an incredibly talented player, by the way; he’s going to be a big-time pro. But for him to be responsive and go in there – he’s really difficult. In that situation, he’s the best guy on our team by far.

And there’s a lot of situations where he’s really good. And then for Malachi and Andrija to kind of talk out – we’re in a Brutus defense,which is a little bit of a different defensive scheme – and for those to be able to talk out the bigs matchup and Malachi to be able to chase that ball without fouling, to do it legally, all of those things were really important. We also had some really poor execution in short- and late-clock situations. It’s all a space where we are going to continue to grow and get better.

Q: I noticed after the game there was a lot of camaraderie. You were giving towels to put on Jasper’s head. What did you see from the chemistry of your team?

Pope: I was proud of our guys. I thought our bench was elite. I think Jaland Lowe was unbelievable on the bench. I thought Jaland Lowe, I thought he probably be my second player of the game. He was unbelievable on the bench, keeping guys engaged and talking. I thought our staff was really good on the bench communicating. We are going to need that. This is going to be, like every season is going to be an up-and-down rocky road huge challenge season. We are going to have to overcome adversity. But you know, like we are trying to create habits. The more you do it the more it becomes a habit. There was some intangible stuff I thought we did pretty well tonight that we are working so hard to make it a habit. Alvin Brooks is probably the leader in all of basketball, actually Alvin Brooks, probably is in terms of body language and team communication. And he grades our team every single day on every single touch on every single beast mode on every single interaction. It’s painstaking work, but it’s really important.

We are going to have to continue to have that juice and get better and better and better at it and it shows in postgame, and we are going to be really successful if we can love each other. Like, we are going to be really successful if we can care about this team, 51% of us can care about this team. That would be unprecedented if we could get there. And so our guys are working hard at it. They’re trying to develop habits, they are working hard to love each other and that’s going to be an every day, all-season-long challenge for us that we are going to keep fighting. I love it. I think if we can do it, not only are we going to be a great team but we are going to be a great example to the world about, just having something more important than just yourself. And these guys have a chance to be great. I mean we haven’t even started the season yet. But those are our goals. That’s what we’d like to do.