Mark Pope’s takeaways after Kentucky basketball’s 91-77 win over Vanderbilt

The full transcript of Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s news conference after UK beat No. 25 Vanderbilt 91-77 on Saturday at Rupp Arena:

Mark Pope: All right. Great environment. It’s March. We’re minutes away from March. Big-time game. BBN turned out. Vanderbilt played great, shot the ball great. And so I’m proud of our guys. It was a fun contest. Hit me with questions.

Q: Coach, I want to ask about Denzel. It’s been a bit of an up and down season for him, but this is a sixth straight game in double digits. What have you seen from him, really, in this second half of conference play that’s allowed to be so consistent?

Pope: Listen, I’m so impressed with him. We’ve talked about this story all season long. He came in here to do one job, and he’s doing a totally different job than he expected, we expected, anybody expected, and he’s grown into – in the last two games, you think about on the road in the SEC and at home against a really, really good Vanderbilt team, he’s nine (assists)/0 (turnovers). Like, that’s hard to do. Two teams that really pressure and really give you different looks. Against two of the best steal guards in our league, in terms of Vanderbilt’s backcourt. So he just has been incredible. He makes big shots. He’s really poised. He had a couple of unbelievable driving lines tonight. And I think his defensive effort is getting overlooked a little bit because in the last games, he’s been so good defensively, and he’s just making every play.

Q: Mark I’m curious, what can it do for your team’s psyche to know they went to Nashville and got hammered by 25, come back and almost flip the tables on it? What can that do, especially this late in the year?

Pope: I don’t know if the guys are reading into that. I just know that right now we want to keep growing as a basketball team and getting better, and we think we can. We think we are getting better. We shot the ball extremely well tonight. We handled some issues that we knew we were gonna have to handle going into the game. I thought the guys were really, really locked in, and we gave up some things, but it was in the process of taking away other things. So I think we’re just growing.

Q: Mark, during the pregame radio show with Tom I think he asked you about Collin, and you talked about watching him as a recruit and a high school player. To see the performance that he did now, how much of his potential has he realized with the way he’s able to shoot the ball, and how much that he still have to grow and where can he elevate his game based on a performance like that?

Pope: Yeah, he’s got so much. He got so much more, doesn’t he? And the thing is, is he’s, 6 for 8 tonight. Is that right? Six for 8? Really 7 for 9. And nobody that’s watched him is surprised. Was anybody surprised? I mean, a week ago, he’s the number one three point shoot in SEC. And so it’s crazy that a guy goes 6 for 8 and nobody’s surprised. It’s just like, that’s what he does. And he’s got a calmness and a poise, and he’s getting more -- he’s always been, we’ve talked about this a lot, he’s always been confident, but he’s just getting more and more comfortable. And his ceiling is incredibly high. Like, he’s got so much more in the tank. Probably the best play was, we got to a high ball screen, and DA had a great driving line against Tanner Tyler, and then Collin’s like, ‘Oh, that looks cool. Let me get a shot at that.’ And two possessions later, he gets exactly the same play, makes exact same play. And that’s that’s fun watching him go through.

Q: A little bit off topic, but recently Mouhamed (Dioubate) put out a video about how he was preparing for your last game, and he’s obviously observing Ramadan, so I just wanted to get your thoughts on it as a man of faith yourself, if you guys are doing anything special to kind of keep his energy levels good during games like this.

Pope: Yeah, we’ve talked about it as a team, and I think when you sacrifice — literally, when you make things sacred. You hope you’re you spend your whole life making things sacred. And he is making this sacred. And when you sacrifice, to make things sacred, the payoff sometimes is rewarded by a great play. Sometimes it’s just like inside yourself, but you always get payoff for making things sacred. It takes a lot of work and sacrifice to make things sacred. That’s what he’s doing. I have unbelievable respect for him.

You think about just what he’s doing, and to do it at this point in (the) season, and there’s nobody that’s making him do it. It’s just a sign of his devotion to his faith. And his personal choice is to not even rinse out his mouth during games. So you can imagine, he got up this morning and had a full shootaround and then rested and then had a full game where he comes out here and plays 24 minutes in a really, really competitive game, and it’s incredibly physical and never even rinsed his mouth out, and won’t for the next five hours until he eats again. I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think when people, when people make commitments like that, and.they sacrifice to make things sacred, I think it’s special, and it’s just who he is. So I could talk about that for days, because I’m really proud of him, and it’s just a great sign. We should all be taking things in our life and making them sacred. And, Lee Anne is like, ‘Would you stop? Please stop.’ Sorry.

Q: Mark. It’s a, it’s a horrid sportswriting cliché that veteran guards win in March. You’re going into March with two seniors and a fourth-year sophomore. How big an advantage can that be for you?

Pope: It’s important. I think, you look at the season this year, and there’s some young teams that are really winning huge, also with young backcourts. It’s just us. It’s who we are. It’s been fun. Otega Oweh, you think, he walks in the season as the preseason SEC player of the year. So how do you grow from that? Like, you’re supposed to be the best player in the league. But for everybody that’s really been paying attention, it’s been incredible watching him grow. He’s sitting there with six points somewhere halftime-ish, and a little bit of frustration. But he is trying to make plays for guys, but there’s a little frustration. It’s just like, if you stay in this, this game is gonna come back to you. And like you mentioned, he does. He ends up with another 23-point game, and watching him kind of grow into that, like, rarefied air understanding the game is pretty fun. So these veteran guards are fun to coach.

Q: Mark, two-part question. First being, just how big of a tone-setter was it for you guys come out and play the way that you did the first time, especially with as many times this season as guys have been on the opposite end of a double-digit defict? And then secondly, you come out of halftime, there was no let up. You guys kept that level.

Pope: I tell you, I was proud of the 46-45 second half. I was really proud of that, and that’s with us playing far from perfect, but making enough plays. I was really proud of the guys for staying really aggressive. As Vanderbilt tried to extend the press, our guys just attacked it. It’s what we do when we’re at our best. There was not second-guessing. Guys were super aggressive against the press, and we ended up with four or five layups, a couple of and-ones, just with our guys making great, aggressive decisions. And that’s, that’s how you want your guys to feel. You don’t want to feel like they’re on their heels, and they did a nice job with that.

Q: You all shot under 30% the last two games from behind the arc, but today, you shot 50% How big is that for your team’s confidence going into the final week of the season?

Pope: It’s fun to make shots. It makes life easier. You know, we never think we win or lose because we make or miss shots, but it is fun to make shots. I don’t know, what are we, probably the second-best 3-point shooting team in the conference. What are we right now, Deb? We’re second, yeah. So we shoot, we make shots. That’s the way this team was put together, and it’s what we do, and it’s what we’re doing and so we trust that we’ll make shots, and our guys have done it.

Q: Mark, I think on Thursday, your exact quote was, we’re not as efficient from 36 to 38 (minutes) as we are from 32 to 34. How pleased were you that you were able to keep Oweh at 34 and get 30 out of Collin?

Pope: Well, I didn’t do a great job with DA. DA (played) 37 but he handled it. He managed it really well. He really, really managed it well. I think you saw some of those really explosive plays from O down the stretch, and he seemed comfortable. He probably could have played a couple more minutes. I thought Jasper was really good. I like Jasper a lo tonight. Jasper comes at us with zero turnovers, and against a backcourt, that’s really one of the best turnover-creating backcourts in our league. So I thought Jasper was great off the bench. Trent gave us some really quality minutes off the bench. I thought AJ was great starting the game, and BG helped us off the bench. BG has given us something on the glass and defensively, and so our bench mattes, and I thought those guys were good. And if we can stay in this space, that’s our golden kind of number. If we can stay somewhere between 32 and 36 we have a chance to operate at our very best.

Q: Mark, you talked about Mo’s sacrifice. Colli put his whole career on hold for two years for mission trip. You just got Avery back from a trip. How does all that, having nothing to do with basketball, does it make you appreciate basketball more?

Pope: I think so. I think I think it does. I think it makes you appreciate and I think it also gives you some perspective. And I think, yes. The answer is yes. I could talk about it for an hour, but I’m just gonna say yes. Q: Were there any stretches where...

Pope: You guys, just real quick. You guys, know, there was a moment where I talked a little bit too much -- I don’t know when it was, a week or so ago -- and it was really expensive. So we’re trying to work on a budget here. I kind of ruined that. So Lee Anne is fully justified in saying, ‘Would you just stop?’ OK, sorry, young man, go ahead.

Q: Were there any stretches where you felt the game could have slipped away, and how did you refocus your team?

Pope: Yeah. Great question, by the way; that’s an excellent question. There were a lot of moments, but you’re working on yourself as a coach, just like you’re working on your guys to stay aggressive. So there are times when you think you’re in a good spot and your instinct is to pull back and be more conservative, and you’re usually wrong when you do that. Usually it’s like prevent defensive football. It usually prevents you from winning, right? And so our guys did an unbelievable job. I think our staff did a really good job of staying aggressive in those moments in the second half where you’re kind of not nursing a lead, but you’re trying to play the game. And I thought our guys were excellent. So there’s a lot of moments where you catch yourself, where you kind of readjust your thinking, say, ‘Stay aggressive, stay aggressive, stay aggressive. Keep making plays.’ And I think that contributed to our guys’ success. Thanks, guys.