Mark Pope’s takeaways after Kentucky basketball’s 84-77 Senior Day loss to Florida
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Florida used post attacks and Kentucky’s poor pace to fuel early runs.
- Kentucky gave up 18–19 transition points from poor rebounding and turnovers.
- Pope will focus on one game at a time and trusts role players.
Q: Mark the two early runs by Florida there, the 11 and 0 to start it off, and then the 13 and 0 after you guys almost tied in, just what did you see in those two sequences from them?
Pope: You know, we’ve done that sometimes to start games where we’ve been a little bit sticky and a little paralyzed, and they went to the post two straight possessions, and their bigs really want to attack, come back to the baseline. We did a poor job on both those defensive possessions. And then, we just didn’t have any pace on the offensive end. So that was the start of the game. And then, the run later in the half was really tough for us, and we’re just trying to figure out how to manage this. We make poor decisions when we’re tired on the floor. We just do. We make poor decision when we’re tired on the floor. So we’re trying to find out how to ameliorate that and fix it and that’s been a problem for us the last couple games. We’ll perform better than that, but that was really disappointing, just disappointing for us. We gave up 18, 19 points in the first half in transition, which, there’s really two things you have to do with Florida. You have to rebound the ball and you have to guard in transition. We did a poor job with that, and a lot of that was — part of was turnovers, even though the turnover number the first half wasn’t crazy, it was six — but part of it was just poor shot selection at the rim, which is what they do. And as much as we tried to communicate that and teach that to our team, I did a poor job of getting that messaging across, because we continued to do it. So that was part of it also, was we put ourselves in harm’s way during that run just by poor offensive decision-making and some turnovers.
Q: Mark, you’re now at tournament time. What’s the one thing that you’re really focused on? What’s the one thing that has to get fixed?
Pope: For us, when we guard, we’re actually pretty good. When we guard, we’re good. And all facets of that have to be great for us. Tonight we had just massive first-half transition breakdowns, and that’s tough for a number of reasons. We’re in a top wedge check, 123, and still, we just didn’t do what we set out to do. When we guard we’re in every game, and so it’s really important for us.
Q: Mark, fans can look at the SEC (Tournament) and say, Well, five wins, five days.’ How do you approach the mindset of your guys heading into (that)?
Pope: The great thing about the tournament is there’s only one game. It’s one game. So we’ll talk about one game. That’s all it is. Postseason is one game. So we’re going to prepare for one game on Wednesday, and we’re going to put our whole heart and soul to it, and that’s the only thing that matters to us, and that’s the beauty of the postseason,
Q: Coach, big picture, how do you feel the team has handled the attention and expectations of the season?
Pope: I think it’s still a work in progress. Ask me when it’s over.
Q: Mark, you’ve talked about needing these guys to step up, especially some of the role players, with the shortened roster and the quick turnarounds. Now the game will kind of be back-to-back-to-back. Jasper tonight had a stretch there where he turned it over and then the intentional foul. How do you use those moments as a learning moment when you’re going to have to play so many games back-to-back and short turnarounds, because they’ll have to play minutes?
Pope: I have a lot of faith in our guys. I got faith in Jasper and Trent and Mo and BG, and they’re going to help us. They’re going to play well. They’ve had stretches where they played well. They’re gonna have big minutes as we get in the postseason. I have so much confidence in that.
Q: Mark, they hold Collin to just two points tonight. Todd said that their big point of emphasis was to just make sure that he didn’t get off 3s. Does he have to be more of a three-level scorer for you guys now that you guys have reached this time?
Pope: Yeah. I thought we did a poor job, man. We got — in stretches the first half, I just felt like we didn’t initiate offense well at all. I was surprised. It’s actually been a strength of ours is, kind of getting into early offense. And I thought we were poor. That’s space where it allows us to — kind of without doing a play call — allow Collin to run into some space, and I thought we did a poor job helping him as a team. But yeah, he’s a major focus. He’s the best 3-point shooter in the league, so he’s always going to be a huge focus.