Everything Mark Pope said after Kentucky basketball beat Nicholls

A transcript of Mark Pope’s postgame news conference follwing the Kentucky men’s basketball team’s 77-51 win over Nicholls on Tuesday at Rupp Arena.

Some questions have been edited for length and clarity.

Mark Pope: First, I’ll just note, I’ve kind of just followed a little bit this tragedy in Louisville. (It) just is awful. Certainly our prayers go out to everybody involved in that. And, man, hopefully we can have the best news possible and the best resolution to that and BBN is just fully engaged in that and best wishes for everybody there.

I’m grateful to this Nicholls team. I like this team. They were actually really good last year, and I think they’re gonna be good again this year. Coach is doing a terrific job, and it was good for us. We had some tightness on the floor on the offensive end, but I was so proud of our guys’ first-half defensive performance and I thought we really, really focused the last several days on communicating defensively and trying to fill some different assignments, and I thought we did very, very well in the first half. Proud of Malachi Moreno. His goal is to be a four-offensive-rebound-a-game guy, and so he started off well. I’m really proud of DA (Denzel Aberdeen). Deb’s gonna check this but I think it’s the first time in his career he’s been six assists and zero turnovers and was really, really good kind of cottoning back into action. Proud of us on the offensive glass with 15 offensive rebounds. That’s where we need to live consistently. So there were some good things and certainly a bunch of tightness, and we have a long road to keep getting better, but I’m excited about coaching this team.

Q: It seemed like you guys really struggled to penetrate in the first half. Was that an emphasis in the second half?

Pope: Well, all we do is work on the defensive end right now, so we’re gonna have to spend a little bit of time on the offensive end. I felt like we were tentative and a little tight. We had a tough time catching balls early in the game, and sometimes you’re so excited about beginning this journey — this is our first step in this journey; we’re so excited, we’ve been building on this for a while now — and so I think we were a little just lost in the weeds a little bit on the offensive side. We have a talented group offensively. We’ll be really good there. We just weren’t good in the first half.

Q: How much influence can Denzel have with his championship experience?

Pope: Yeah, and Denzel’s been through it, so he’s still gonna be in high-pressure situations where things are complicated, but he just knows what it feels like and what it looks like and how he experiences it. He’s kind of been in the biggest moments and so he’s been on his fair share of journeys already, and so he’s gonna be a real calming influence on our group for sure.

Q: How was it to see Collin have his biggest night?

Pope: I thought Collin started out the game elite defensively. I thought he made great defensive plays early in the game, and again, none of us had much of a rhythm offensively, so it was nice to see him find some comfort level on the offensive end late, too.

Q: How did you think your debut players played?

Pope: Jasper had a huge challenge the last couple days. He knew. We talked about him on the defensive end. I thought he was much, much improved tonight. The one thing about Japser, man, when you give him an assignment, he takes it seriously. He came into practice on Saturday with a vengeance, just determined to guard. He was gonna find a way to guard. And I thought he gave us great minutes defensively, and he’s so creative offensively he’s always gonna give us good stuff there. AJ, I think just kind of working into this vibe, I thought he got a little bit better as the game went on. Malachi, it’s funny because he’s only one game into his season but he’s already played three really big games, and he’s just gonna be a force to be reckoned with as he becomes more and more comfortable.

Q: How much does it excite you to give up the fewest points you have as the Kentucky coach, especially knowing what Jayden Quaintance will bring in rim protection?

Pope: I’m really excited about that. We held them to 15 in the first half. The all-time record at UK is 11. So we were four points — two baskets — shy of that. So I like it. We started leaking a little bit in the second half, but I thought overall, it was a 10-kill game. It’s the first time I’ve coached a team here that’s got to 10 kills in a game, so I was really proud of that. We can get so much better, and our defense is gonna have to carry us at some points this season, and that’s OK. Because that can be a real strength of ours, and that’s gonna be a fun piece of this game for us.

Q: Any update on Trent Noah’s injury, and how are these injuries helping you learn about what players can do in different roles?

Pope: One of the assistants came up to me, I think at the end of the first half or the beginning of the second half, and said ‘Trent’s good to go.’ And I was like, ‘That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.’ Trent’s the toughest due I know. He was in a lot of pain on the floor, and he doesn’t ever show that. So I went to (trainer) Brandon Wells, walked down the sideline to Brandon Wells, and I (said) ‘Brandon, is he ready to go?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, we just tested him. He cut, he ran. He said he’s feeling fine.’ And my direct quote was ‘Well, Trent Noah is a liar.’ I think I yelled it louder than I probably should have. He’s just such a tough kid, so I’m glad we were able to get through the game and not have to put him back in. We got to get him healthy, because he’s an important part of this team. But one of the luxuries we have is, we have guys. We have guys. And we have a lot of guys who can go play and go compete, and so we have some depth that we didn’t have last year that — our guys were incredible last year, but we should be able to overcome some of those issues this year, handle them a little bit better.

Q: After the Georgetown game, Mo and Otega seemed to take it personally, the lack of defense, of ball-screen defense, especially. How personally did the team collectively take it going into the weekend practices, and how much are you going to have to get that connectivity on ball-screen defense?

Pope: It’s really important. It’s really important. It’s gonna determine how good we are this year. It was nice, (Nicholls guard) Jalin Rice kind of got a little bit of action in the second half, so we switched up the matchup, put Otega on him and then just blitzed every ball screen. So it was just an out-of-timeout adjustment, and our guys were actually able to execute it twice. The first time, it ended up being a turnover out of bounds. The second time was an unbelievable blitz late by (Jelavic) to do it. So I like the fact that our guys are far enough advanced right now that we can just make simple adjustments like that in a game and you can actually go execute them pretty well. And it’s gonna be important for us to be able to do that this season. It’s gonna be really important. But it’s fun. Guarding is fun. It’s inspiring, actually. It’s pretty great. We had so much frustration in the first half offensively. We were just tight and didn’t feel right and no flow, and so every single timeout it’s a conversation about like, ‘Guys, this is unbelievable.’ Like, we’re like — I’m gonna make this number up, but we have five minutes left in the first half and they only have 10 points. Like, ‘This is incredible what you’re doing.’ We should be gathering energy from our defensive success, not in here frustrated about not feeling great on offense. That’s really important that we can go get energy from having defensive success and that we can not lose our energy because things are a little discombobulated offensively. It’s gonna be really important for this team, so I was proud of our guys. It wasn’t easy for them to do that, but they fought hard enough to kind of stay focused on that task at hand in the first half, which is great.

Q: How rare is it for a team to take energy from the defensive end?

Pope: Listen, it’ll give us a chance to be special if we can do it. We were treading water. We were barely staying engaged because of our defensive success. If we could ever get to a point where we’re like, ‘We don’t even care if we score. We’re getting a stop. Every single time down the floor,’ that would be actually a really fun team to coach. And this team, I don’t know if we’re built exactly that way, but we might be built close. We might be built close, and it’s a pretty fun way to play.

Q: Collin Chandler set the bar pretty high on dunks.

Pope: That was fun, right? I’m actually curious to see my reaction. Usually I can stay stone cold. I assume I did on this one, but I’m not sure. We’ll see. But that was spectacular.

This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 11:22 PM.