Everything Mark Pope said after Kentucky basketball beat NC Central

A full transcript of Mark Pope’s postgame press conference following the Kentucky men’s basketball team’s 103-67 win over NC Central on Tuesday at Rupp Arena.

Q: Coach, all week you talked about the post-game ending of the last game. And then on your show last night about effort, about resetting. It seemed like you were sending some messages to some guys, keeping guys in who were playing hard. Just talk about that tonight and the effort you got from guys and maybe some of the messages you sent.

Mark Pope: Yeah. We just have a standard that we have to live up to, and we’re not. And we have to. And so we’ll keep fighting until we do. That’s it. Q: Kind of along those lines, Mark. You kind of lit into BG there with about eight minutes left, called the timeout. He obviously didn’t play again. That’s about as fired up as I have ever seen you since you’ve been here. Are you intentionally taking a different demeanor with this team? Because it seemed like you kind of stayed with that the rest of the game.

Pope: We just have a lot of growing that we have to do right now. And we’ll grow. We have good guys. We have competitive guys. We don’t know really what it means to compete yet, which is terrifying, but we will. We’ll learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn fast.

Q: Hi, Coach. 27 assists tonight, that ties the season high. What do you attribute that to and what did you like from the ball movement?

Pope: Collin Chandler had a great night for us at 8-1 (assist-to-turnover ratio); that’s really impressive. He was 8-1-1 and was a really big catalyst for us. I thought our guys managed the zone and the changing defense pretty well. I think… we got stagnant a little bit, but they did a nice job trying to make a play for each other. We just need it to carry over into more competitive games.

Q: Mark, you moved Trent back into the starting lineup tonight. I know the ankle injury maybe kind of stunted the early part of his season. What did you like from Trent tonight and maybe what can kind of be stretched out to some of those high major games like you mentioned?

Pope: I like Trent every night. Trent’s not a perfect player. There are some things that are complicated for him, areas of the game where he struggles, but he’s all-in. He’s fully invested. He’s gonna give everything that he’s got every time on the floor, and he’s pretty effective. So I thought he was good tonight. I thought he gave us good looks. I thought he was aggressive. I thought he probably had our best defensive play of the first half. We finally got a third defender engaged. And so Trent is, he’s a really important part of this team and he’s got a chance to grow into a terrific player and a great leader, and I’m proud of him. Just like all our guys, he’s trying to figure it out.

Q: What did you see from your defense tonight and maybe how did it look different from that last couple of games?

Pope: I was disappointed with our defense tonight. I was disappointed with the fouls. I was disappointed with the late gap help. I was disappointed with our on-ball ball-screen pressure. We need to be way more up the line, way more aggressive to turn a guy around rather than just letting him pick us apart. I felt like our third defender was hit or miss, and they did a nice job spacing the floor where the floor was really overloaded. So you just have your third defender is just naked on the weak side, and we have to make that play, and we didn’t tonight for the most part. So there’s a lot of room for us to grow. We got to clean up the fouls, we got to clean up the gap help. We got to take some pride in keeping guys in front of us. If we’re gonna be a really good team in competitive games, those are spaces where we have to grow. And this group will. I love these guys. We just need to get better there, and we will.

Q: Going back to the not knowing what it means to compete. We heard all summer fall about how competitive those practice were, with talent on talent. Was that overblown at the time or is that just not translating to games, and if not, any idea why?

Pope: It hasn’t translated. It hasn’t translated yet, but it will. ‘Yet’ is a powerful word, guys. It’s the best word in the English language. It’s three letters that are super powerful, and it hasn’t translated yet, but it will. It will. We’re gonna be so proud of this team. We’re not yet, but we will be. And that competitive spirit, man, I’ve done a poor job of getting that out of our guys in games, which has been monumentally frustrating for me, but we’ll get it out. We’re gonna find it or we’re gonna die trying. It’s there. We just got to get it and we got to find a way to do it and we got to get guys outside of themselves and we got to get guys living and dying for this team in this gym with this this fanbase in these games. And in competitive games, when things go bad, we have to be able to tap into that. And so far I’ve done a poor job eliciting that from our guys, (and) nobody’s more surprised about that than I am. But that’s not gonna stand.

Q: Mark, 22 points for Jasper tonight. Led the team with a +30 in the plus minus category. Did you feel like tonight was any kind of major growth moment for him and just his development throughout the early course of the season, that you’ve seen from Jasper?

Pope: I’m proud of Jasper. I mean, he’s trying. It’s a steep learning curve. I think he’s trying to take in all the information the best he can. I thought his very first play in the game, I thought he had some force downhill, which has been a really important part of him, and again, it’s got to translate into better games. It’s no mystery what we have to do. We have to translate some of these things into more competitive games. But I’m proud of his progress, and his whole heart’s in this, and I expect big things from him as we move forward in the season, just like all of our guys.

Q: Mark, you talked about finding the competitive spirit. Have you talked to any individual players about driving that from within the team or has that just have to happen naturally?

Pope: I’ve talked to all of our individual players about that on a regular basis, and we’ll continue to have those conversations.

Q: Mark, Otega tonight had a big game and you talked and talked about how it has to happen in more competitive games. The one time I saw him gather the guys around him and was getting pretty intense in that huddle. What did you think of his effort tonight and maybe taking steps towards leading some those other guys?

Pope: I thought he was great. I thought really one of the only good things we saw coming out of the first half was he had Lattimore at 1 for 10, and he was pretty much totally responsible for that. This is a guy that averages 20 points a game; it’s a good player. They run a lot of actions for him, and Otega took that on and said ‘Hey, I’m gonna make sure that we handle this,’ and I think he’s really trying to rally the guys. He’s trying to show some leadership. He played well on both ends of the ball tonight. Otega’s really important for us, and he’s carrying a big load and he’s got to. That’s what you do. That’s your job. And he’s gonna continue to grow into that. We need him to be great moving forward.