Mark Pope’s takeaways after UK basketball’s ‘disappointing effort’ against Georgia
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Pope blamed poor management of Georgia’s press, which led to points off turnovers
- Coach cited poor ballhandling, fatigue, and overall poor decision-making.
- UK abandoned assignments; Georgia shot 57% from three in second half
The transcript of Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s news conference following the Wildcats’ 86-78 loss to Georgia on Tuesay at Rupp Arena:
Mark Pope: All right guys. I’ll take questions. Go ahead.
Q: Mark, losing the points-off-turnover battle 22-9. Just what were they doing? Was that you guys making mistakes or was it them kind of forcing them?
Pope: Well, they’re the number one non-steal-turnover-forcing team in the conference, in conference play. And we did a really poor job managing the press. We weren’t in attack. We weren’t chasing it for nugget plays. Sometimes when you throw out a press, you just give it too much respect. We just needed a couple ballhandlers to have enough motor to be on attack, and we just couldn’t do it. We just didn’t, so it was very effective for them. And that’s what they do, and they did it well tonight.
Q: Mark, they shot 14 of 31 from the 3-point line. Where did you see defensively the breakdown there tonight?
Pope: We were not good defensively tonight. In the second half, they shoot 57% from the 3-point line. They’re the lowest assist-per-field-goal-made team in our league and they were 20 (assists) and seven (turnovers) tonight. That’s just a poor commentary on our defensive effort. Inexplicably to start the second half, we just abandoned defensive assignments, and also Georgia made some good plays. So that was disappointing effort from us, and it’s gonna be hard to win when you let people shoot that well.
Q: Mark, I’m not even sure how to ask this. It seemed like late in the game where you had a possession where you knew you needed to get something, you didn’t see a lot of passing. It seemed like a lot of one-dribbling and then kind of a prayer at the basket. What were you trying to get out of those possessions?
Pope: We had a lot of possessions at the end where we were trying to work some peel game. We ran a couple of underneath out-of-bounds actions. At that point, you’re trying to go as quick as you can and get some positive action and the plays were hit-and-miss a little bit.
Q: Hey coach. It seemed like until late in the game, most of the offense tonight came from Oweh and Chandler. What was going on with the other guys getting into the offensive flow tonight?
Pope: The press was distracting for us, for sure. We ended up playing on our heels, and it was actually hard for us to kind of establish anything other than early in the halfcourt because, to be honest with you, our lead guards did a poor job of going back and demanding the ball so we could get into a familiar space. We just did a poor job. We really did, and Georgia did a nice job of not allowing us to do that. And so we ended up not functioning as well as we do. I thought they did a nice job just coming out of the gate just with incredible intensity and force, and they got us on our heels, and it took us a long time to respond.
Q: In the first half, you guys were you guys were up nine at one point, and were trailing at the half. We’re also seeing you’re running a much tighter rotation, it seems, in the second half opposed to the first. Is it you want to see what’s going on in the game and then adjust? What’s the difference in the two?
Pope: Well, we don’t have that many players, first of all. And so we got to find a way to get our guys’ minutes down. Probably can’t have Otega at 38 and DA at 36, because our performance suffers as those guys get fatigued. In fact, really what you saw in the first half, we kind of had the game in hand. We’d been really diligent in transition defense. Georgia’s the fastest attacking team in our league. And then we fell apart. We had some poor offensive possessions where we bailed on our transition defensive assignments. I mean, it’s just as simple as that. You cannot take plays off in this league. You can’t get distracted, especially when it’s the number one thing on the board that we have to accomplish, which is consistently, every single possession, being in transition defense. And we just allowed ourselves to get distracted.
We actually started the game well. We were functioning well, and then we just let Georgia get into a flow in transition, which is what they do. And we never really fully recovered in the second half. We had some halfcourt miscues and some transition defensive miscues, some that were generated by poor offensive decisions at the rim. It’s the No. 1 shot-blocking team in our league, and inexplicably we still were really stubborn at times – the second 10 minutes of the first half and at times in the second half – about working hard to get to the rim, and then take on the power play and make a play for a teammate. It’s incredibly frustrating, but it’s a space where we’re gonna struggle. As much as we don’t do that, we’re gonna continue to struggle. We struggled that way tonight, and it was poor decision-making on our part.
Q: Mark, Otega over 20 points for the sixth time in his last seven games. What to you has been the key to kind of getting him unlocked in this consistent way?
Pope: I think O’s probably disappointed with his game tonight. The breakdowns that mattered in the game were tough. He’s carrying a lot of burden on our team, but I know he wants to put a better performance out there on the floor.
