Everything Mark Pope said after Kentucky basketball’s 72-63 win over Ole Miss

A full transcript of Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope’s press conference following the Wildcats’ 72-63 win over Ole Miss at Rupp Arena on Saturday:

Mark Pope: All right, let’s go fast. Hit me, guys.

Q: Coach at the beginning of the game and throughout the first half, it wasn’t pretty on offense. Through SEC play, you guys were actually leading the conference on 3-point percentage. Threes weren’t falling, but your team found a way to fight back. O gets it going in the second half. What does it say about your team, despite the injuries, despite the slow start, they just keep fighting back?

Pope: I actually thought the first half was incredible. What’s it been, a month since we had a lead at the end of the half? I thought it was amazing. I’ll take that every time. Mississippi does an unbelievable job. Chris is a great coach, and he does an unbelievable job of just mucking up the game. Just mucking it up. It hurt us that O was on the bench for a lot of the first half, for sure. But I thought Trent came and gave us a great run; I thought Jasper was, again, great tonight. And when you play a team like that that switches and is so physical and gaps you up and is really game-planning – they really,really gameplan you; he does a great job game-planning — you just understand that it’s gonna be a mucky-muck game, and it’s not really about fixing it and making it beautiful. It’s about can you keep your mentality focused through the frustration. Our guys did a good job doing that.

Q: Mark, with Kam obviously out for a prolonged period of time, has there been any more discussion the last couple days about Braydon Hawthorne and possibly burning that redshirt and is that a possibility from here on out?

Pope: It’s something that (there’s) certainly been discussion. There’s so many dynamics there, most importantly right now he’s not healthy. So we can’t burn the redshirt now because he’s not healthy. But certainly he is an incredibly talented player that could really help us down the road. We’ll see. We’ll see. He’s got to get healthy first.

Q: Coach, entering the season, Otega was met with all of the expectations in the world, kind of fell short for the first half of the season. So far, second half, seven of the last 11 games, 20-point games. What does that say about him as a leader and a player, to be able to overcome all that outside noise, and what do you think has been that shift for him?

Pope: You said that he fell short a little bit in the first half of the season and then he’s been really good in the second half. I appreciate you saying that. That’s the hallmark of this team. That’s what we do. Maybe we’ve taken on that DNA, right? Listen, a season’s a living, breathing thing, and everybody — even a veteran like Otega — is facing new challenges and new dynamics and having to understand the game in a different way. I love learners, and i feel like he’s been an amazing learner this season, adn that’s hard to do. It’s hard to do as a senior. But man, he’s on a run isn’t he? YOu think about all the frustration he had during the first half tonight and then he bailed us out a lot in the second half and was terrific. So I’m really proud of him.

Q: Mark, I think it’s safe to say that for most people, Jasper’s season hasn’t looked exactly how you maybe expected to going into the year, but there’s a point in the first half there where he kind of created that eight oh, run for you guys, with all eight points. What can you say about his ability to kind of be his own spark plug?

Pope: Yeah, I’m not surprised. I mean, it’s who Jasper Johnson is. We keep saying it, like, he’s coming and he’s getting better and better and better. Sometimes we get — I guess that’s what we have to do as fans. We have to make a permanent evaluation on something in a moment. It’s fun sometimes to see commentary on, like, for us, especially the last month, to see the commentary on the first half of our games and then the second half. Because as a fan, like whatever just happened right now is like eternal and you make all your judgment based on what happened right now. And as coaches, we have this beautiful opportunity to chart the growth. And actually, that’s what I love about this game. And Jasper’s in it, man. I’m so proud of him. I say it every single game. He’s playing more and more and more and playing better and better and better and getting more and more and more confident. He’s making some mistakes, but he’s learning from them, and he’s a really talented player. He’s on his way and so, you know,

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t start his first 10 games of his freshman season. He actually turned out to be a really good player. Shame on those people that game seven were like, ‘Ah, he’s no good.’ Because they’re wrong. Jasper has got a huge future in this game.

Q: Coach, I’m sure you’d prefer a little bit of a bigger win. But it’s another tight game, another tight finish. But what does it say about the team that they make those clutch plays, whether it’s getting a rebound off missed free throws, or making the free throws or getting those stops that they’re kind of figuring out how to win these very, very tight games like you mentioned?

​​Pope: It’s fun. All the cardiologists in BBN are going to be so happy because they’re gonna have so much extra work from this season. But it’s really fun. Like, big plays are fun, the drama is fun. And you think about starting with Malachi: Misses two free throws and then steps back up to the line just a couple possessions later and makes two under pressure. And you think about Collin Chandler making an unbelievable — Storr’s a really talented, really physical player, and probably the defensive play of the game was when he took one to the chest (on) the first hit, caught the second move, took one in the chest, caught the third move, took one in the chest. By all accounts would have been a charge, but maybe it’s just the time and space of the game, an unbelievable, gutsy defensive play, and then Mo flies by to challenge, and we end up rebounding an airball, right, in a huge moment in the game. DA comes up with a huge defensive rebound. It’s kind of fun to chart the last few minutes of every game, because every single one of our guys is making a big play, and it makes it fun, man. I talked to our coaches after about, these moments, actually, if you can just take yourself out of all the noise around it, this is really special. This is really special what these guys are doing.

Q: Mark, just a couple quick things on the injured guys. First off, I noticed Jaland wasn’t on the bench with the team today. What was that situation? Secondly, I know pregame you announced that Kam had surgery yesterday. Any chance he returns this season, the timetable for that? And third, you just mentioned that Braydon is dealing with something. What is the injury that Braydon Hawthorne has?

Pope: BH has got a calf. (Williams’) surgery was perfect yesterday. It’s beautiful. We saw all the imaging, and it was unbelievable, by a world-renowned surgeon. And J-Lowe is on his way to get surgery with a surgeon we trust in a different part of the country that our medical crew sent him to. So all those guys are on the mend. I don’t know if Kam will be ready for Tuesday. We’ll see. That was a joke, just in case. I saw everybody jump to their phone like ‘I gotta tweet this out! It’s a joke. I can confirm that he will not play on Tuesday.

Q: Mark, to go back to finishing games. Obviously, North Carolina, Missouri, the games got away from you. What has changed? What have you seen? Where’s the team grown? How are they able to do that?

Pope: Well, I think the guys are a little more confident with each other. We’re staying as simple as we possibly can. And when you stay simple -- teams are built different ways. We’re trying to stay really, really simple so our guys can go play. Sometimes you have guys that that function a little differently, where you can trick up the game a million different ways and and they like the little nuanced part of it. Our team is actually a playmaking team and so we manage to do it on offensive and defense. Seems like we’re winning a lot of close games right now, which has been really fun. But it’s our players are just stepping up and making big plays like the three I categorized and then there’s 10 more that were really important plays down the stretch.

Q: Kind of a two-part question on Collin. What were you thinking when he took that long three right in front of you…

Pope: I was yelling ‘Shoot it!’ It’s what we do, and he’s an elite-level shooter, and he loves that little step back. Collin is interesting. He loves the moment. He wants it. He wants the moment. He’s the one who ran up to me at LSU, when everything went wrong last couple (possessions), he’s like, ‘I want to throw the pass!’ Today it’s two free throws, technical free throws, that were pretty important earlyish, kind of tone-setting. He’s like, ‘Let me go get these!’ And he wants that shot, and you have to be wired a little different to do that. It’s fun to watch him grow. Our guys are growing, and it’s really fun to watch him grow. So I was like ‘Shoot it!’ Like, ‘Let’s go!’

Q: Has that come out in him since the beginning of the season? It seems like he’s kind of growing into that.

Pope: All of our guys, man, getting more comfortable. It’s fun to watch. Guys, be safe. Get home.