‘Incredibly poor.’ Louisville just revealed this Kentucky team’s biggest flaw
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Gameday: No. 12 Louisville 96, No. 9 Kentucky 88
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday’s Kentucky-Louisville men’s basketball game at the KFC Yum Center in Louisville.
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There are no moral victories in the world of Kentucky basketball.
That’s especially true when the team on the other sideline is the Louisville Cardinals.
Following a 96-88 loss to U of L that appeared to be heading toward a much more lopsided margin, UK coach Mark Pope praised his team’s tenacity.
That’ll come in handy as this season progresses.
But it wasn’t enough against the Cats’ biggest rival, and Pope knows as well as anyone that what happened at the KFC Yum Center on Tuesday night isn’t acceptable.
“We have a competitive group,” he said. “We played extremely poorly, and credit Louisville for that. We played extremely poorly. But we do have a competitive group. … I was proud of the guys for competing, but that’s not the standard we have at Kentucky.”
That’s about as rosy as Pope got in his postgame comments.
That’s the kind of night it was for Kentucky.
The ninth-ranked Wildcats fell behind by double digits not long past the midway point of the first half. They trailed No. 12 Louisville by 20 at one point in the second half. The Cats, improbably, narrowed that margin to just four points — closing the gap to 88-84 by the final TV timeout of the game — but that’s as close as they got.
Brief glimmers of hope aside, this was, on the whole, a beatdown at the hands of Kentucky’s biggest rival. And the Cats took the worst of it on the defensive end.
Pope used some variation of the word “poor” several times to describe his team’s ability to stop the Cardinals’ high-octane offense.
“We kind of lost the discipline of our defensive principles, which was incredibly disappointing for us,” he said. “But if you do — and you’re playing against talented players — then that’s what you’re gonna see.”
And these Cats saw plenty of talented players in white and red.
Freshman guard Mikel Brown Jr. — a projected lottery pick in next year’s NBA draft — led the way with 29 points. He also dished out five assists. “A really special talent,” Pope called him.
Senior guard Ryan Conwell added 24 points for the Cardinals. “A terrific player,” Pope said.
Conwell is part of a trio of 3-point sharpshooters that U of L coach Pat Kelsey plucked out of the transfer portal over the offseason. Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley rounded out that group. Those three combined to go 9 for 24 from 3-point range — 37.5%, not great by their standards, but good enough to do plenty of damage to the Wildcats.
Louisville’s 3-point shooting was expected to be a key to this game. The Cards outscored the Cats by only three points from behind the perimeter, however. It was Kelsey’s offense, in general, that gave Kentucky fits.
U of L switched the Wildcats to death, often ending up with great looks from deep or clear lanes to easy points at the bucket. Kentucky was often out of position. That led to fouls at the rim. Lots of them.
The Cardinals shot nearly double the amount of free throws as the Cats — 31 to 16 — and outscored Kentucky by nine points at the foul line. In an eight-point game.
“We were late to everything,” Pope said. “Again, credit to them. We were on our heels on the defensive end the whole night. And that’s a problem that we’ll fix. We’ll get better at it.”
The early numbers say the Cats couldn’t get a whole lot worse.
Their adjusted defensive efficiency rating for this one was 108.8. The lower the number in that stat, the better. And this one was not good.
For those who can recall every game of Pope’s first season in charge, these are the showings that matched or exceeded that 108.8 number: the 20-point loss to Ohio State in Madison Square Garden, the 106-100 win over Florida in Rupp, the first loss to Alabama, the embarrassing loss to Arkansas in Rupp, the even more embarrassing loss at Ole Miss three days later, the 16-point defeat at the hands of Auburn and the season-ending loss to Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament.
One great shootout win in that batch. And a whole lot of games the Wildcats would like to forget.
Add this one to that list.
Denzel Aberdeen had a memorable performance in his third game for Kentucky, scoring a career-high 26 points and hitting a number of shots to keep the Cats within striking distance. Collin Chandler and Otega Oweh were the only others in double figures, each with 12 points. Both of those players fouled out toward the end.
Oweh, the SEC preseason player of the year, had an especially rough night. He turned the ball over five times — tying his high as a Kentucky player — and was often mobbed by the Louisville defense as he tried to drive to the basket.
“They did everything we didn’t do,” Pope said. “They were really good at bringing a crowd. And making him play through multiple defenders.”
Kentucky, meanwhile, gave the Cards all kinds of space.
The story of this game, according to Pope, was in the assists and the turnovers. Louisville had 20 of the former and just six of the latter. Kentucky had 14 of each.
Pope said the Cats would lose a game like that every time.
“It’s a credit to Louisville for playing the game the right way,” he said. “And we got punished for not playing it the right way.”
While Kelsey’s bunch applied pressure to the ball over and over again, taking the Cats out of their rhythm and leading them into forced shots, Kentucky’s defense didn’t do much to make the Cardinals uncomfortable.
The Wildcats lost the battle of points off turnovers 19-10. Another nine-point difference in an eight-point game. UK didn’t force the first Louisville turnover until just 3:15 remained in the first half.
“Our defense is not designed to be a high-octane, turnover defense,” Pope said. “It’s just not the space we live in right now. For me, it was the progression. It was the pressure in transition, where I thought we were very poor. And then us getting out of transition — back into our shell principles — was just incredibly poor.”
Kentucky was one of the worst teams in the country when it came to forcing turnovers last season. Pope and the UK coaching staff hoped to change that with this bunch — a long, athletic, physical and potentially disruptive roster designed to make life difficult for the opposing offense.
On Tuesday night, that didn’t happen.
Kentucky’s exhibition loss to Georgetown last month offered a sneak preview of the defensive woes that would haunt the Cats at the Yum Center. UK had better showings in its first two regular-season games, but those came against Nicholls and Valparaiso — two woefully overmatched opponents.
Louisville, for the first time in years, is playing at Kentucky’s level. That was apparent from the get-go Tuesday night. And Pope implied he knew something like this might be coming.
Defense will be the key to how far these Cats go this season. And their biggest rival revealed just how far they have to go to make things right on that end of the floor.
“Leading up to this game, I think we all knew that we were facing an issue that we hadn’t found good resolution to in practice,” Pope said. “And it showed on the court tonight, for sure.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2025 at 1:14 AM.
