This Kentucky team has no identity. And the Cats are no closer to finding one
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky fell 83-66 to No. 17 Michigan State, revealing defensive breakdowns
- Coach Mark Pope conceded a missing team identity and blamed inconsistent execution
- Roster turnover and lack of continuity contrast with Michigan State’s veteran core
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Gameday: No. 17 Michigan State 83, No. 12 Kentucky 66
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday’s Kentucky-Michigan State game at Madison Square Garden in New York.
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This Kentucky team has no identity. And the Cats are no closer to finding one
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Notable numbers, full stats from Kentucky basketball’s 83-66 loss to Michigan State
This wasn’t just a loss. It wasn’t even merely a rout.
What happened to the Kentucky men’s basketball team on the most famous basketball court in the world Tuesday night was a warning sign. And Mark Pope appeared to know it as well as anyone.
No. 17 Michigan State throttled the 12th-ranked Wildcats in Madison Square Garden, an 83-66 decision in the Champions Classic for UK’s second loss to a ranked opponent in as many weeks, another one in which Pope’s team trailed for most of the night.
Afterward, it took the UK coach more than 45 minutes to make his way to the postgame press conference. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo had already come and gone. The Spartans’ locker room had opened and closed before Pope walked through the back of MSG and up the short flight of stairs to answer questions about what had occurred that night in “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
Kentucky’s coach didn’t have many answers. Or he didn’t want to share them, at least.
What’s missing with this team?
“Yeah, that would be a long answer,” he replied. “That would be really long.”
That’s where Pope left that one. And he stuck around on the podium for only six minutes before making way for two of his players — Otega Oweh and Malachi Moreno — to take questions.
Oweh answered four. Moreno got zero. Nothing much was learned. And that was that.
All in all, the whole thing lasted about nine minutes. Which happened to be about the same amount of time that the Wildcats were in the game Tuesday night.
It started as a shootout. Kentucky led 17-14 at the first TV timeout, a high-energy, back-and-forth battle that seemed on track for a memorable game between two college basketball giants.
It turned one-sided soon enough.
UK missed five consecutive shots after taking that 17-14 lead. By the end of that skid, Michigan State was up six. The Spartans took their first double-digit lead with 6:52 left in the first half. And they never led by fewer than 10 points for the rest of the night.
“They played really tough, physical, strong. Dominated the game, pretty much from the tip. And played a great game,” Pope said. “We’re really disappointed, and we got a lot of work to do.”
That pretty much sums it up.
Michigan State punched above its weight from the perimeter. The Spartans made just 13 3-pointers total in their first three games coming into this one. They were 4 for 5 from deep before the first TV timeout Tuesday and finished the night at 11 of 22 from long range.
“Did we make more 3s today than we did all year?” Izzo joked in his opening statement, to laughter from some of those assembled. “Yeah, that’s not meant to be funny, but it is funny.”
It wasn’t very funny for the Wildcats, yet they didn’t do much to stop it either.
Just like they had a week earlier in the Yum Center — where Louisville beat UK 96-88, a game the Cards led by as many as 20 points — Pope’s Cats let Michigan State have open shots from all over Manhattan.
Knowing how badly the Spartans had shot the ball coming into this one — they were at 21.7% on the season — was letting them have a few early part of Kentucky’s plan?
“No, we just played poor,” Pope replied. “It was poor, poor attention to detail on the defensive end.”
Kentucky’s adjusted defensive efficiency rating against Michigan State was almost as bad as it had been against Louisville, and that had been one of the worst efforts of the Pope era so far.
At least the Cats scored in the Yum Center. They couldn’t hit much of anything Tuesday night.
UK’s field-goal percentage (35.1%) and 3-point percentage (23.3%) were atrocious. In fact, this was the 41st game of the Pope era, and it was the second-worst number for the Cats in both of those stats. They shot 29.8% from the floor and 18.2% from 3-point range in an 85-65 loss to Ohio State last December. That game also took place in Madison Square Garden.
One difference: by that point in the season, Pope’s Cats had already defeated Duke, Gonzaga and Louisville, giving UK fans plenty to celebrate and signifying that this program was on the right track.
Nothing looked right for the Wildcats on Tuesday night. And it wasn’t a matter of Michigan State hitting more shots than it normally does or Kentucky simply missing more than its fair share.
Following UK’s win over Eastern Illinois on Friday night — the Cats’ third rout of an overmatched mid-major opponent — Pope lamented that he hadn’t yet figured out this team’s identity.
In Madison Square Garden, it became quite clear that these Wildcats don’t have one.
Not yet, at least.
“I think that we’re in the process of learning and growing together as a team,” Pope said. “I think that this team has a terrific future. I believe that this group can become something. In this early part of the season, I feel like the identity that we felt like we carried may have been stripped away. And maybe we’re facing some reality right now.
“And that can be an incredibly, incredibly painful process. It’s a terrifying process. If you treat it right, it can be a galvanizing process. And that comes down to an issue of the character of your organization. I think the character of our organization is terrific, but it’s being tested in a big way right now, and we’ll either answer the bell or not. And that’s the beautiful thing about sports. You either get it done or you don’t. Right now, we’re not getting it done.”
This team’s identity was supposed to be predicated on physical play, especially on the defensive end. Pope put it together to be longer, stronger and more athletic than his first UK roster, which was plenty talented offensively but lacked a certain grit.
This Kentucky team hasn’t shown enough of that physical presence yet. On Tuesday night, the Cats were outrebounded 42-28. They were often pushed around in the paint. They weren’t consistent with their defensive pressure. And they couldn’t find any offensive rhythm.
Izzo’s team has an identity. The core of this Spartans’ roster has been together long enough to form one.
Jaxon Kohler, who had a game-high 20 points, is in his fourth season with the program. Jeremy Fears Jr., who dished out 13 assists, is in his third. Starting center Carson Cooper has been with Izzo for four years. Starting guard Coen Carr has been a Spartan for three.
No one on Kentucky’s roster had been a Wildcat for more than a season before this one started. Pope couldn’t help that. There was no roster left after John Calipari departed for Arkansas last year.
But it’s also clear that this UK team — one of the darlings of the transfer portal — just isn’t clicking.
Izzo, who has now defeated Calipari and Pope four games into his 31st season as Michigan State’s head coach, was asked after Tuesday’s game if continuity is undervalued in college basketball right now.
“How about 100 frickin’ percent?” he replied. “I mean, homegrown? People that are playing for the name on the front of their jersey, because they know the name on the front of their jersey? People that care about the place they’re at and the players they’re with?
“I give credit to a lot of people. Everybody does it a different way. But it’s funny you’d ask that question, because that seems to be the people that are getting the most credit. You know, the transfer portal recruitment is almost bigger than winning games. Not at Michigan State.”
That wasn’t a shot at Pope or Kentucky. Izzo praised UK’s coach several times over the course of his postgame comments. But, on Tuesday night, it was the reality of the situation.
That doesn’t mean these Wildcats can’t win big this season. In fact, Izzo predicted they will.
“You’re going to see Kentucky win a lot, a lot of games,” he said. “Well-coached. Good team. And it wasn’t their night.”
Pope contradicted that. He blamed himself several times over the few minutes that he spoke.
“I’m gonna take the hit for this,” he said in one of those instances. “I got guys that are skilled, talented players. They care a lot. And I just haven’t been able to put the pieces together quite right yet.”
Pope also pushed back on the idea that those pieces being in and out of the lineup has anything to do with the Cats’ current predicament.
The team’s top point guard, Jaland Lowe remains out with a shoulder injury, and Pope had no update on his status Tuesday night. UK’s most physical presence, Mouhamed Dioubate, left the game late with an apparent leg injury. Pope had no update on his status either. Oweh, who led the Cats with 12 points Tuesday but hasn’t looked like himself so far, missed much of the preseason with an injury, and others have been out, too.
“I think that’s not contributing at all,” Pope said of injury woes and their overall impact.
The good news for Kentucky is that it’s still early. This season is only five games old, after all. But five games in, these Wildcats are no closer to showing the world who they are or who they can become.
In fact, they might be even further from that goal than when the season started.
“We won’t fail this season,” Pope declared, with UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart and others watching from one side of the room. “We just have failed up till today. And we will build an organization where it won’t be disrupted every time someone steps in and steps out, because it’ll actually have a team identity, not an individual identity.
“Until we get there, we’re going to really struggle. That’s my job. That’s why Mitch brought me here. I’m doing it poorly. I won’t do it poorly for much longer.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 11:40 PM.
