Mark Pope seems to have found the right combination to finish out Kentucky wins
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky settled on a consistent five-man lineup that has closed three straight games.
- Injuries trimmed rotation to nine players and simplified Pope’s late-game choices.
- The stable five improved endgame chemistry, fewer turnovers and clutch scoring.
The five-game winning streak that Kentucky will take into Tuesday night’s game at No. 18 Vanderbilt has featured a common theme: lineup continuity at the end of basketball games.
And after weeks of mixing and matching and searching and subbing, it seems that Mark Pope might have finally landed on a top five for winning time.
Pope said before UK’s win over Texas last week that he thought more continuity was forming with his lineup combos, expressing the feeling that his Wildcats were getting more comfortable with each other on the court.
To that point in the season, there hadn’t been much rhythm to his lineups at the end of games, with different Cats playing different roles — some prominent ones not playing at all — down the stretch, based on matchups and how the night had gone so far.
“I’ve gone into games having real expectations, then come out being surprised by what was functional and what wasn’t. I really have,” Pope said. “I think sometimes we anticipate correctly, and sometimes it’s just not someone’s night. Or sometimes the matchup’s different. Or sometimes the team’s actually going to a different lineup than we expected from them. Or working different actions. Or putting us in different positions.”
He continued to list off scenarios. The bottom line is that Kentucky has seen a little bit of everything so far, and that left plenty of late-game, close-score opportunities for just about everyone on Pope’s previously 12-deep roster.
That’s great to build confidence — when things go right — but chemistry has been slower to form as a result.
In each of their three close SEC games before Pope said all of that — the loss to Missouri and then wins at LSU and Tennessee — the Kentucky coach deployed a different combination of players in crunch time.
In the past week and a half, he seems to have settled on a fixed five for such situations. Obviously, some of that is by necessity — three key Wildcats are now out with injuries, knocking Pope’s rotation down to nine players — but Kentucky appears to have landed on a formidable group with a clear chemistry on the court amid this five-game winning streak.
The 24-point victory over Mississippi State that launched the streak wasn’t close for most of the second half. The buzzer-beating victory at LSU that followed featured Denzel Aberdeen, Collin Chandler, Otega Oweh, Kam Williams and Malachi Moreno on the court for basically the final 8:56. The only sub in that span came when Williams fouled out with one second left and Andrija Jelavic subbed in for the final, deciding play of the game.
Williams was available the next time out, but Pope went to a different five at the end, playing Mouhamed Dioubate in Williams’ place, alongside Aberdeen, Chandler, Oweh and Moreno. And that’s been the five on the court as Kentucky has closed out its past three victories.
- In the 80-78 win at Tennessee, those five played the final 3:58 together, except for a few subs on the Vols’ final possession, designed to maximize defensive and rebounding possibilities. That UK group outscored Tennessee 9-2 down the stretch.
- In the 85-80 win over Texas, those five were on the court together for the final 3:11 — except for, again, some situational subs in the final seconds — and made the plays necessary to hold off the Longhorns down the stretch.
- And in the 72-63 win over Ole Miss on Saturday, the same five played, basically, the final 5:09 as one unit. Kentucky outscored the Rebels 15-9 over that time to earn its fifth straight victory, the Cats’ longest winning streak since Pope got off to a 7-0 start last season.
In each of those three games, every one of those five players did something meaningful toward the end, and many of those game-deciding sequences featured plays with guys relying on each other — and this budding chemistry — to get the job done.
Another common theme across those three games? The Cats took care of the ball. In the final five minutes of their wins over Tennessee, Texas and Ole Miss — 15 minutes of basketball combined — UK committed only two total turnovers.
“I think that’s kind of what’s leading to us closing them out,” Oweh said after the win over Ole Miss, which forced only one Kentucky turnover in the final eight minutes Saturday.
UK basketball moving past injuries
The circumstances of Kentucky’s roster have led to fewer choices for Pope at the end of games.
Jaland Lowe, expected to be the team’s starting point guard, is out for the season with a shoulder injury. Williams had emerged as a starter — and occasional finisher — before suffering a broken foot early in the second half against Texas last week. And Jayden Quaintance will miss his sixth consecutive game Tuesday due to swelling in his surgically repaired knee.
With these three prominent players unavailable, some of Pope’s decisions have been easier.
In Kentucky’s last loss — a 73-68 defeat to Missouri in which the Cats were outscored 15-2 down the stretch — Lowe and Brandon Garrison were among those who played major minutes at the end, with Aberdeen, Chandler and Dioubate playing very little (or not at all) during that disastrous stretch. UK also committed three turnovers in the final four minutes of that loss, and the Tigers scored five points off those miscues in what turned out to be a five-point win.
The winning started three days later against Mississippi State. The momentum kept going four days after that, with Moreno’s buzzer-beater in Baton Rouge. And now, all of a sudden, the Cats seem to have found some late-game rhythm.
The comeback win at Tennessee is UK’s most impressive victory of the season so far, and that came on a day when Oweh was off his game. He was 3 for 11 from the field with three turnovers in Knoxville, scoring 12 points and making some big plays down the stretch but needing to lean on others before and during crunch time.
“And we still won,” Pope said. “And we won because he has good guys around him, and he still hung in there long enough to make a couple really important plays. And I think that’s got to be comforting for our guys. Like, ‘I don’t have to carry this. I look around in this huddle and that guy can do it and that guy can do it and that guy can do it. We’re gonna do it together.’
“I think that helps you. So hopefully we’ll continue to build off that confidence.”
Pope has kept the same finishing five ever since. Three close games, three Kentucky wins.
And UK’s other four players — Jasper Johnson, Trent Noah, Jelavic and Garrison — have still made meaningful contributions in the first 35 or so minutes of those victories, with all nine Wildcats placing a noticeable mark on the box score against Ole Miss on Saturday.
“I think everybody’s feeling like they’re a part of it. I think everyone’s feeling like they’re in it. And I think guys feel like they have help,” Pope said at the beginning of last week.
UK’s injury situation has led to louder calls for 6-foot-8 freshman Braydon Hawthorne — an intriguing perimeter-oriented player with potential NBA draft upside — to burn his redshirt and hit the court for the final stretch of the season. Pope hasn’t closed the door on that possibility — and Hawthorne’s teammates say he’s good enough to contribute immediately — but if this is the nine that Kentucky rolls with the rest of the way, there’s a growing confidence it’ll be enough.
“Most definitely,” Aberdeen said. “I feel like our whole team can play. So whoever’s name is called, I feel like everybody’s gonna be ready for their position when their name is called. So, yeah, I feel like we’re gonna be good.”
This week will present the biggest challenge yet to UK’s newfound chemistry. Vanderbilt and Arkansas are, by all measures, two of the best teams in the SEC, and both of these games will take place in what should be rowdy road environments. Other top-tier league opponents — Tennessee (Feb. 7), at Florida (Feb. 14), Georgia (Feb. 17) and at Auburn (Feb. 21) — await.
Winning time is going to get a lot harder over the next few weeks. But the Wildcats certainly appear better equipped to deal with it.
“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,” Pope said Saturday. “And it makes it fun, man. I talked to our coaches after (the game). These moments — 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.”
