Everything Mark Pope said after Kentucky basketball’s gritty win over Indiana
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mark Pope credited defensive communication and 14 offensive rebounds.
- Jaland Lowe and Mo Dioubate provided energy, grit and key late-game plays.
- Pope emphasized growth, ownership and practice habits to sustain progress.
A full transcript of Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s press conference after his Kentucky men’s basketball team beat Indiana 72-60 on Saturday at Rupp Arena.
Mark Pope: First, congratulations and thank you to Coach Skinner and the women’s volleyball team for making the Final Four and doing it in straight sets so everyone could make it over here in time for the Kentucky-Indiana game. Coach Skinner just seems to always do everything perfectly, and once again he’s done it. So we’re excited for those guys. I think what he’s doing is pretty much unprecedented in sport, really. He’s somewhere next to John Wooden in terms of what’s happening, so it’s pretty amazing to watch those guys.
Ton of love for BBN for showing out tonight. They were just unbelievable in the gym, and we’re so grateful. We never take it for granted how undying, loyal and faithful and hanging in there with us BBN is. It’s just the greatest fan base in the world. It’s fun to start this Kentucky-Indiana rivalry back up.
Q: Mark, it seemed like tonight you guys had some guys knocking the rust off. That had been coming back with like Jaland Lowe tonight, Mo comes back. How much of a spark did Mo, Jaland and even Brandon tonight when you guys went on the run and took the lead?
Pope: We have good stories. When you go through a ton of adversity and you get out the other side, you got a lot of good stories. So it’s fun to have good stories. Today’s Mo’s birthday, and this was a game perfectly suited for Mo. He was elite on the defensive end. His physicality and doing it legal was elite. He was great on the glass. It was awesome to have him back. He’s such a great competitor, I think it’s been killing him to be out, so it was great to have him back. I thought he was incredible.
J-Lowe, there were a lot of favorite moments in the game, but one of my favorites moments in the game was, J-Lowe had missed yet another uncontested layup, and we were sitting in the timeout, and I was like ‘Hey, that just means you’re one closer to the make, man. Be hyped about it! You’re just one closer to making one.’ And what was great – that comment wasn’t great. What was great was, he was sitting to my left and his four teammates sitting in the chairs turned to him and said exactly the same thing. They all jumped in like, ‘Yeah, shoot it man! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ And then of course the first shots he makes after missing all the shots that I preach and teach and talk about is a stepback 15-footer. So go figure. But it was fun to see his competitive spirit come through tonight.
And then Brandon Garrison. You know, our job is to win. Our job is to win, and in some respects nothing matters besides us winning. That is our job. But in the process, watching guys grow is pretty awesome, and I was really proud of BG tonight.
Q: This summer you talked about laying the foundation defensively. Tonight 18 forced turnovers, there have been flashes up to this point. Can you just talk about that and also the effort on the defensive end, it looks like that picked up in both areas?
Pope: This Indiana team just scored 113 points, right, against a really good Penn State team. They’re a potent offensive force. I think they started the season scoring 100 points every game, it seemed like. I actually love watching them on film. They’re so smart and they confuse you so much with slips and peels and screens and double screens and slips to flairs, and they combine all these actions. And it’s really not playcalling; it’s the guys. Coach has done a great job about teaching those guys to kind of get to all that stuff in the flow of the offense. So we knew we had a huge challenge. I was really proud of our communication tonight. I thought the guys really, really were trying to fly around, and I thought they did a good job of communicating. Coach Fox had the scout, and I thought he did a terrific job preparing our guys.
Q: Coach, there were a couple of times tonight where it would be second, third, fourth, fifth, even fifth chance to get the ball into the basket and get those points. How important was that effort in having that momentum shift during the second half?
Pope: It was 14 offensive rebounds for 18 points – in a slow game. Like, it was such a slow game. It was a foul-ridden, just walk-it-up game. We could never get some pace to the game. Credit Indiana for that. So it was the whole game. Stories unfold ironically. As a staff, we’ve been really frustrated about our ineffectiveness wedging. It’s one of our three 100 percents that we track every day. We’ve been dealing with a lot of internal conversations and frustration and we just haven’t been very successful on the glass in a while. And to the point where the guys were frustrated. We do wedge corrections every single day of last day’s practice and last day’s games, and they were being half-hearted and whatever. And finally Coach (Cody) Fueger – who’s in charge of that part of our team, that metric – lost his mind in a film session. I mean he lost his mind like I’ve never seen him. I’ve been with him like 60 years, and he just lost his mind. And so it was fun to see these guys embrace the idea that we wedge to win. We don’t wedge to do a job or fulfill a quota. We wedge to win. And certainly without our work on the offensive glass – we were not a pretty offensive team tonight. So you take away the offensive glass, we had no chance to be in this game. So these guys offensive rebound to win the game.
Q: Mark, next time I’m struggling to write a story, can you come yell at me and maybe break a clipboard. I’m curious, Brandon, the way people talk about the younger people nowadays, could have gone the opposite direction when you line into him. How confident were you he wouldn’t and what about the process can you walk through that?
Pope: Well, I don’t think you’re ever really confident. I don’t want to make a bigger deal of anything than it was. You can’t burn hot all the time, I don’t think, as a coach now. But I think there’s times where you’re kinda left with nothing else a little bit. And you’re exactly right. That’s the tough thing. I wish I could tell you I know how every player is gonna react to every confrontation or conversion I have with them, but you don’t. It’s just like your children. You don’t. So I’m left with just real pride. Like, BG’s mom should be really proud. And his inner circle should be really proud. Because there’s something inside him – and I think we talked about this at the press conference, maybe – but there’s something inside him. And listen, there’s no way to hide from any spotlight here at Kentucky. Like, every single little moment of our game and interactions is blown up, which is one of the great things about this place. But there were a hundred reasons why BG could have gone in the corner and complained with a teammate or called out to coaches or hung up his jersey or come and been a pouty guy in practice. There were a thousand reasons why that could have been his reaction. But due to what’s inside him and how he wants to be a father example to his son and how he wants to make his mom proud and how badly he wants to be successful and the process of him growing up to be hopefully a great man, which hopefully he can do. That would be worth everything. He showed up to practice, and we go through practice, he has a great practice and then he – we don’t do a ton of conditioning in practice, but this day we did, and he just on his own just won every sprint. Outsprinted every guard, every single person. And I didn’t tell him to do that. I didn’t pre-prep him to do that. That was just his response. We don’t always respond the right way, but he responded the right way, and I’m super proud of him. I’m happy for him. Our job is to win. That’s it. But those things are really special to me. They’re really special. And that’s gonna be in his pocket. It’s gonna be a little part of his DNA. It doesn’t mean he’s gonna respond right all the time, but it means there’s a way better chance next time – in life, in basketball, whatever – that he’s gonna have a chance to respond better. And that’s how you become a great man. It’s pretty cool.
Q: Mark, when it comes to your all’s offensive flow, what kind of difference do you see when Jaland is on the floor?
Pope: We are not a thing of beauty right now. Actually that’s not true. That’s not true. I actually thought it was beautiful tonight because the relentless force was beautiful. But there’s not a lot of pretty offense out there. We’re still trying to find ourselves. J-Lowe certainly helps us. I thought he was great today with drive lines. Great with KD in an incredibly physical game. I thought our guys were extraordinary in the gap. So we talk about winning the gap all the time. That’s one of the things that Indiana does great. That’s the way they turn you over is you go into the gap and they kinda sucked everybody in there, and it’s just all hands on the ball. I think for the game, guys, we had four turnovers, which is incredible. Because we didn’t make any shots, right? And so it was just kinda this mucky, like, force-it-inside game, and I thought J-Lowe was really terrific for the most part being able to kinda reattack and reattack and reattack and use the Gortat (screen) and use the seal screen and kinda find a way in there to actually make some things happen. Once he gets his rhythm back and kinda makes some of those bunnies, he would have had a really impactful game.
Q: To follow up on all the questions about the offense and I know you love numbers so I will throw two at you. One, this is the fewest points you’ve scored in a win here and also was the worst shooting percentage in a win here. For you, just how important was it for this team’s psyche that on a night the shots were just not falling, you guys just out gritted them?
Pope: I think we’re probably somewhat in that space. Listen, I have a pretty good sense of – I don’t know if you guess how things are gonna go, but once you kinda start down a path, I think you have a pretty good sense of how you dig yourself out. And the chances of us playing a game right now where we are just firing on all cylinders and making every shot, that’s probably not where we are in our confidence and our courage and our spirit right now. Right now, to tip the needle and bring back some belief and consolidate ourselves as a team, it’s probably gonna be, like, gross, beautiful basketball like it was tonight. And so it’s important. I think this is probably how we had to find our way, and it’s probably not the last time we’re gonna have to find our way this way, but it’s OK. Because our guys can do it. They can do it.
Q: DeMarcus Cousins obviously tweeted after the Gonzaga loss that he felt like the team was playing with no heart. Tonight felt a little bit different. You had guys diving on the floor and more scrappy. How do you assess the shift that the team has made in heart?
Pope: Listen, I don’t shy away from the truth, even when it hurts. Might as well own it. So we tried to own it as a team. Like, we talked about it and just said ‘Listen, this is no time to deflect comments like that from people that love this program.’ DeMarucus loves this program. Like, he’s proud of this place, man. He wants these guys to represent. So you own it. We’ve had a lot of conversations as a team about like, ‘Guys, this is actually what we’re putting on the court right now,’ and I think that the quicker you own it, the quicker that you can change it. And I couldn’t be more proud of the way that these guys won the game tonight, because it was ugly and it was full of heart, it was full of intensity. We finished the half and there was no energy in the gym and there was no energy and it was a mucked-up, foul-ridden, slow-as-molasses game and we’re down seven. It was like these guys just had to go self-create the energy on the defensive end and on the glass, and so I’m really happy with the guys. We just got to move on to the next step. We’re gonna have to embrace this personality for a while, I think. I do think we have a chance to grow into an elite offensive team. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen tomorrow.
Q: Coach, kind of more on that second half. You go in down 7 and there was some scattered boos and the building is kinda shaken up. Can you just talk about the team responding to adversity.
Pope: Like I said, I’m really proud of the guys. We talked about it all week. One of the things we’ve been really disappointed in is in high-level games, we’ve been very poor in our response to adversity. We just haven’t rallied around each other. We’ve had some go-away instead of some dig-in, and I thought that was the opposite tonight. And we’re gonna need to continue to practice that. It’s actually a practice skill, and we’re gonna need to continue to talk about it and make it a real thing so that when it happens it’s not a surprise and we know how we’re gonna react. We had guys step up and help do it. I tell you what, this Otega Oweh – anyway, so I was proud of the guys and it’s where we’re gonna have to live. And it’s cool. I love living here. This is awesome.
Q: Mark, obviously, there has been talk in shortening the rotation a little bit. We did not see Jelavic on the court today and is that sorting the rotation or is there something more there? Pope: I actually had no idea where the rotation would go today. I didn’t know how Kam was gonna feel on the court today. I had no idea how Mo was gonna feel on the court today. I did feel like there was space for Jela to be really effective in this game. I actually felt like it made some sense. He’s our most effective post player, especially at the four. And this mucked-up game kinda felt that way. But the game just kinda told us where to go, and the guys responded pretty well. I expect Jela’s gonna help us in the future, for sure. Collin had a little bit less rotation; Jasper had a little bit shorter rotation after being our leading scorer last game; Trent maybe had a little bit shorter rotation, but that’s just the nature of the game and what the game was calling for tonight. And if we can embrace that, we can win in a lot of different ways.
Q: You had some concerns about the team’s competitiveness how the last couple of weeks. How much of that that change was due to Jaland coming back and Mo coming back or was it the whole team flipping a switch?
Pope: It takes all of us. I think it’s all of the things. And we dipped our toe in it, and now we got to double down. We got to double down and see if – you know, the nice thing about a season is, every day we tell a defining story about what a team is. So in a day, this team is this or this team is that. That’s fans’ job and that’s media’s job is to make an evaluation on a team. But as a team in our inner circle, we’re a work in progress and we know that. And so we know what we were yesterday, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna be that today. In fact, if we’re the same thing we were yesterday, then what are we doing with the season, right? So we’re excited to grow; these guys are committed to grow; we have to grow. We got to get lot better, and we will.
Q: Coach, on that note. Growth can be messy and it can be loud, especially with young men. Playing at Kentucky. These young men have a big spotlight on them. Do you find that you are really trying to clarify the difference between struggle and failure with them? Because they can get in their own heads, especially with the amount of pressure on them to win here?
Pope: Listen, we’re tight. I mean, we are tight. We only shot 15 3s today and we were 3 for 15. We’re tight. It’s OK. Like, that’s actually a part of basketball. I don’t love the players that are, like, I’ll make fun of a guy like, ‘Oh, you got nervous. You got scared’ and there’s those guys that are like, ‘Nah! I never get scared!’ Come on, man. What are we talking about? We all get scared. We all get nervous. Own it, and let’s grow from it, right? And so we’re a little tight right now, but we’re gonna get great, man. We’ll be relentless, and we will will ourselves into playing some great basketball, and we just willed ourself into a win tonight, and that’s what we had to do. That’s probably what we have to do right now. But if we do that enough, then all of a sudden we’re gonna have some belief that we can win this way and things are gonna loosen up a little bit. And that’s just the process. It’s not rocket science. If you’ve been around sports, you know that’s the process. That’s where we are right now.
