‘We can play so much harder.’ What Mark Pope said after UK basketball beat Valpo

A full transcript of Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope’s postgame news conference following the Wildcats’ 107-59 win over Valparaiso on Friday at Rupp Arena.

Some questions have been modified for length and clarity.

Mark Pope: I’m proud of our guys. This is a good Valpo team. They’re gonna win games this year. Coach Powell does a nice job. I’ve known him for a long time. He runs good stuff and he’s got great pace and has got physical players. I thought our guys came out with tremendous energy from the get-go, and I felt like they functioned pretty well. We’re making progress. We got a long way to go. We got to get way, way better, but it was a good night for us, and I’m proud of what we did.

Q: How pleased were you with not only making the first six shots of the game but keeping the focus defensively?

Pope: Yeah. We’re trying to live on the defensive end. It’s hard to guard. It is really challenging. And this team really challenges you because of their pace, their just continuous movement, and they do a nice job at it. And so I thought we were — we knew we were gonna be really challenged with our gap defense. We talked about this; we were really poor in the exhibition game against Georgetown. They had great movement off the ball. We were much better with our gap integrity and all of our gap concepts against Nicholls, but they were more stationary, more space. With Valpo, they really challenge you with a ton of movement. I thought our guys did better. I thought our bottoms were solid for a lot of the game. I thought BG in particular. They really count on their duck game to take you out of rotation. I thought BG managed it incredibly well. He didn’t get sealed. He danced with his feet the whole time. He was able to release and get to the bottom when he needed to. He was active in the monster, so he was an example of the guys doing really well there. So I was really proud of the guys’ defensive effort. We had some lapses, which I’d like us to keep this standard every single possession for the rest of our lives, and that’s our goal. But I was proud of the effort.

Q: What makes Malachi Moreno such an effective rebounder? And secondly, his progression as a freshman, having a double-double matching up against guys more veteran and older than him.

Pope: I was really proud of him today. As a freshman just in his second game, there’s so much going on. Like, there’s so much of life, also. There’s just all the things. Like all of our guys, he’s dealing with a thousand different distractions, but he was able to come on the floor tonight and really focus. I think he’s got a physicality that might be surprising, actually. I think when you look at him, you expect he’s gonna feel a certain way when you actually make contact with him, but I think he’s way stronger. I think he’s doing an unbelievable job rebounding out of his area. I think he’s determined. He’s usually one of our best percentage hit-and-go-get and wedge guys. It’s his consistent effort, I think, that’s really, really functional for him on the glass. He’s been our best rebounder on both sides of the ball pretty consistently from the very get-go. So he’s taking that challenge really seriously, and it’s fun to watch him grow. He’s young. He’s gonna have ups and downs, but his ceiling is really, really high, and he had a huge impact. The thing I was most proud of, when he did get the ball in the post, he had a tendency to attack baseline, attack baseline. He was really disciplined tonight about attacking middle, and he was really patient with the bounce. Like, you squeeze in extra dribbles and really just kind of working to get to his spot. He got a couple shots blocked, and then in the second half went to the rip-through, the step-through, which is just exactly how you respond when people overplay your left shoulder. I thought the way he calculated the game was really good. So I’m proud of him. Probably the most important thing, he’s a three-assist, zero-turnover guy for a freshman big that had a ton of usage tonight. I don’t think you see that very often.

Q: You had 10 guys between 15 and 24 minutes, and you’ve talked about spreading the minutes, spreading the points and it reminded you of your ‘96 team if they could be that selfless. What can you do to ensure that’s how this team progresses and what has to happen in the locker room to make sure it progresses that way?

Pope: It’s gonna be an every-day, all-year-long endeavor. And it’s gonna be a constant focus and a constant topic of conversation. I think we can play so much harder. I talked to the team and the staff about this. I don’t want ever want someone to take the ball in sideline out of bounds and just have an uncontested catch. We have enough bodies and enough energy and enough talent to contest every single possession, every single second of an entire game. I think we can wear on guys.

I don’t have a final possession count, but it was pretty high tonight, and they helped us because they were willing to really run up and down, too. But we’d like to make these games as many possessions as we possibly can, and if a team chooses to slow us down, then we’d like to make the intensity of every individual possession so high. We need each other to do it.

I actually felt like we had fatigue on the floor. You think about it, our highest minutes was Collin Chandler at 23 minutes. Otega at 20; Malachi at 20; Mo at 20; Jasper at 21; everybody else under 20. So our highest minutes guy was 23, and I still felt like we had fatigue on the floor. So that’s a credit to our guys for playing hard, but I’d like to play harder and harder and harder. I think we can do it. I think we squeeze more into every single minute of the game, and I think it feeds everybody.

Q: How important is it to have Jaland Lowe back and get guys into more natural positions?

Pope: I thought Jaland was great. He was a five-oh (assist-to-turnover) guy in his first game in a Kentucky uniform. He comes in, he’s five-oh off the bench. That’s really impressive. He can get wherever he wants to on the floor, and that means a lot to us. That really has a huge function for our team. I thought he was terrific defensively. He made an unbelievable saving play in transition one possession. The rest of the team just wasn’t there to help him. I think he’s a difference-maker for us. He’s gonna be massively important to this team. He’s got a ton of experience and he’s just cat-, cat-quick. Can get wherever he wants whenever he wants, and that’s gonna be important for us.

Q: How important for the team’s confidence was it to see some 3s fall like that?

Pope: So you guys will be upset with me. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about our 3-point percentage. And I know that’s unconventional, but for us a lot of times, the offense starts when we shoot it. It’s not a finish. And so we’re just focused on attempts. So we might have a game where we shoot 11%, we should win that game; we might have a game where we shoot 40%, we should win that game. It’s just baked into the cake. The 3-point shot is the beginning of a possession; it’s the beginning of an opportunity for us. It’s not the ending. We shot it well tonight, 11 for 28, and that’s fine. I still am frustrated we’re not getting up more. We just got to find a way to get over this 30 mark.

Q: Any early thoughts on Louisville?

Pope: It’s just the biggest game. The nice thing for us is every game is the biggest game we’ve ever played. And in-state rivalry games are always fun and exciting. We can’t wait to get to it. We got to get through the autopsy of this game and take what we can learn, and then we’ll jump into that tomorrow. But it’s just a beautiful thing. Everything comes so fast. We’re gonna be in New York a week after next. Someone told me that yesterday, and I was like, ‘Wow, that seemed like it was months way.’ So it’s just great game after great game after great game, and this is certainly a big one just like they all are. We’ll finish up this deal and then get to that, and can’t wait to get out and play.

Q: What did you see from Jaland Lowe, and do you have any timeline on when he could possibly start and play without caution to his shoulder?

Pope: That’s gonna be a work in progress for sure. But man he looks sharp. He had two corners — one in the first half, a same-side, left-side corner where he just, like — most of us mere mortals dream about being able to move on the floor as quickly as he can and then just spray it the way he can. He had an unbelievable play to draw a power play and then find… (Denzel Aberdeen) in the corner in the first half. And then the second half, he threw that left-handed hook pass, I think it was to Collin…, and he just has got unbelievable vision. He just throws lasers, darts everywhere. They’re on-time, on-target passes, something we don’t talk about a lot, but it’s NBA-level. One of the differences between college guys and NBA guys is college guys get in the lane and they kind of see and they deliver a pass to an area. J-Lowe is delivering passes right into the (shooting) pocket, and they’re 35-foot hook laser passes, right? And it’s off the move. It’s just really impressive. I don’t think there’s a lot of players in college basketball that can make the plays he makes. Earning us really good shots is pretty special. A bunch of our guys were great hitting the roll tonight, but he was a big part of that. I thought he exerted terrific energy. He just brings so much to the game. He’ll open this game up for us and make it a little bit easier, and that’s important.