Mark Pope is trying to ‘dumb it down’ for this Kentucky team. It’s not working
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mark Pope simplifies offense; Kentucky fails to execute pace and halfcourt flow.
- Kentucky led late but committed turnovers and missed shots in closing stretch.
- Otega Oweh scored 20 points; supporting cast produced limited offense and impact.
A four-point lead and a little momentum in their favor, the Kentucky Wildcats sprinted down the court with a purpose early in the second half Wednesday night.
They’d already recovered from a seven-point deficit against Missouri, and a hot start out of halftime surely sparked visions of a much-needed victory — perhaps even a relatively lopsided one — in the minds of many inside Rupp Arena.
This particular play started with Otega Oweh grabbing a defensive rebound, and — with the other nine players on the court in front of him — deciding to push the pace the other way.
Oweh dribbled twice and passed it ahead to Denzel Aberdeen, who glided toward the rim and — after finding no clear opening for a layup — deftly dished it to the corner, where Kam Williams caught the ball and immediately swung it to Jaland Lowe on the wing.
Lowe didn’t hesitate, dribbling quickly toward the basket, and — with all five of Missouri’s defenders now drawn to one side of the court — kicked it back out to Oweh on the other wing.
Only five seconds had passed between Oweh initiating the transition opportunity and the ball finding its way back into his hands. This is what Kentucky basketball fans had been waiting for all season. This is what a Mark Pope offense was supposed to look like. This, surely, was a sign that these Wildcats were finally turning a corner.
Oweh caught the ball on the wing, squared up, rose to shoot and … that shot was blocked. It had barely left Oweh’s fingertips before Mizzou’s Jacob Crews glided in for the swat. Oweh recovered the loose ball and passed it to the post, where Malachi Moreno kicked it back out to Aberdeen, who bricked a 3-pointer from the corner. Crews corralled the rebound, and off they all went the other way.
If anyone needed a reminder that this Kentucky team is nothing like Pope’s first one, well, there it was. This game would not be a turning point for these Wildcats. And that play was just a tease.
By the end of the night, UK fans would see a whole lot worse. And the final score — Missouri 73, Kentucky 68 — served as yet another reminder that these Cats have a long way to go.
Pope’s team was just four days removed from another lopsided defeat — Alabama beat the Cats 89-74 in the SEC opener Saturday — in a season already filled with them. Kentucky now has a 9-6 record. The Wildcats are 0-2 in the SEC. In eight games against high-major competition, they’ve trailed at halftime seven times. They’re 2-5 in those games, and the outlier in that bunch — a tie score at the break against North Carolina — ended in defeat, too.
A season after Pope restored hope to a UK basketball program that had lost all sense of it, morale has returned to the gutter. And it appears there are no quick fixes.
This was the third game in which Pope had the entire UK roster at his disposal, and he inserted Jaland Lowe and Jayden Quaintance — two key players who have been limited — into his starting five for the first time all season.
That didn’t change anything in the beginning. Kentucky got off to another horrid start offensively, missing six of its first seven shots and scoring just 10 points in the first 11 minutes of the game.
The final analytics said that — of UK’s eight games against high-major competition so far — this was the Cats’ second-worst offensive showing of the season. Only the 94-59 loss to Gonzaga last month was worse. Like on that night, there were no silver linings with this one.
“I’m just really frustrated,” Pope said. “We’re emphasizing every day about sprinting to screens, sprinting to screens, sprinting to screens, and it is like we’re in molasses out there. And we’re trying to simplify and dumb things down, but man, we are just — I’m disappointed with the pace, and I’m disappointed with our willingness to get to a second side. I’m disappointed with our physicality ducking in.
“And you know, when we do that — when we turn the corner on some of those things — we’ll be good, but we’re not going to be good, on the offensive side, until we find some pace. We’re just not.”
Pace was a key talking point for Pope, whose first UK team could give defenders whiplash with the way it moved around the floor, both in transition and the halfcourt. He wants this Kentucky squad to live in transition, and the Cats were able to get out on the run Wednesday night, beating Missouri 24-7 in fast-break points.
But even that wasn’t enough for Pope, who was imploring his players to sprint down the floor at every opportunity, yelling and waving his arms emphatically in that direction as some of the Cats plodded instead. The UK coach implied that he’s seeing that urgency in practice.
“We’re having a tough time translating,” he said of the actual games. “I’m not sure exactly why, but we’re having a really tough time translating.”
The pace was nonexistent once the game settled into the halfcourt, and that was clearly what irked Pope most during this game. That was rarely a problem last season, when that ball was flying all over the place as the Cats looked for ways to penetrate a defense.
It’s been a major problem this season. The ball often goes nowhere.
“So pace is twofold,” Pope said. “You can have pace in transition, which is awesome, which we get to in games. Our pace in the halfcourt stinks all the time. And part of it is the personnel that we’re playing with. Part of it is guys maybe overthinking. Give some credit to the defense also, for sure. But our pace in the halfcourt has been like the manifestation, the DNA, of who we are on my teams.
“And it is incredibly frustrating that we’re not finding that right now. That’s why we’re trying to simplify everything. Dumb it down. Dumb it down, so it’s just incredibly simple, so we can just at least execute with some pace and some decision-making. We’re not there yet. Clearly.”
Pope used some variation of that “dumb it down” phrase several times Wednesday night to describe what he’s trying to do to put his players in a better position to score. That’s not what he wants to be saying midway through a season, no matter how many injury issues this team has had.
As difficult as UK’s offense was to watch for most of the night, the final four and a half minutes were enough to give Pope nightmares for weeks. Despite the troubles, his team led 66-58 after Oweh hit a 3-pointer with 4:37 remaining, seemingly putting the Cats well on their way to beating Missouri — 12.5-point underdogs — and landing their first SEC victory.
Instead, the Tigers outscored the Wildcats 15-2 down the stretch, with Brandon Garrison providing the only points after Oweh’s 3 and UK missing its other five shots over the final four minutes and change.
Still, the Cats were clinging to a 68-67 lead when the clock ticked inside its final minute. Oweh fumbled a pass out of bounds with 54 seconds left. Mizzou took the lead for good at the other end. On the next possession, Garrison bounced a pass out of bounds.
There were other miscues over those final four and a half minutes. There were also some good plays that resulted in quality looks, but none of them led to points. Afterward, Pope went down the list, almost a possession-by-possession recounting of what had happened — as if each play had been burned into his memory — with basketball-speak explanations for what went wrong.
“We didn’t make the plays we needed,” he said to sum it all up. “So, really frustrating.”
Oweh scored 20 points. He was the only Wildcat in double figures. Quaintance, in his fourth game back from major knee surgery, had one point and four rebounds in 18 minutes. Lowe, who’s still learning to play with his injured right shoulder, helped the Cats get out in transition all night long, but he finished 2 for 11 from the floor. Nine points and two assists in 28 minutes.
Pope was called for his first technical foul as Kentucky’s coach. It took him 51 games to get it. The anger on display at that point in the game — stomping and swearing all over the UK sideline — was replaced by agitation afterward. Pope said the Kentucky fans disgruntled with how this season has gone are justified in feeling that way.
“They’re the greatest fans in the world, and … I’m sure they’re incredibly, incredibly frustrated and upset,” he said. “So they get the right to do whatever they want. In terms of this team, we don’t have that opportunity. Our job is to suffer all night long, figure out how to do this a little bit better, get a little bit tougher, dig in a little bit harder, execute a little bit (better) and move on and win games.”
From the looks of this team, at this moment, that will be easier said than done. And Pope didn’t do much to dissuade anyone from that notion Wednesday night.
“We’re working hard to really just simplify everything,” he said. “Just so, so simple. It’s a work in progress, and it is frustratingly slow. It just is so frustratingly slow. So, you know, getting our group to believe in what we do and actually execute what we do and then execute when the lights are on has been incredibly challenging so far. So, we gotta keep going.”
