‘A great team.’ Mark Pope previews UK basketball’s first NCAA Tournament foe
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- UK basketball coach Mark Pope talks about Kentucky’s first round NCAA Tournament game.
- The Wildcats are a 7 seed for March Madness and will play 10 seed Santa Clara.
- UK and Santa Clara will face off on Friday afternoon in St. Louis.
Kentucky basketball will see an unfamiliar foe in its NCAA Tournament opener.
But when No. 7 seed UK faces No. 10 seed Santa Clara on Friday at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis — just the second-ever meeting between the schools — Cats coach Mark Pope will find the opponent plenty recognizable.
As the coach at BYU, Pope faced off against the Broncos and coach Herb Sendek four times, winning once.
“I’ve played Santa Clara a bunch....” Pope said on his radio show Monday night. “(Sendek) is playing different. The full-court pressure is new for him. His personnel is way different than it was a few years ago. There’s a little bit of familiarity. Most importantly, you just know he’s an elite-level coach, he’s a big-time game planning guy. He’s really going to have his guys ready to go. Then you learn everything you need to from the film and the numbers.”
UK learned its NCAA Tournament draw Sunday night. During his radio show, Pope — who opted for a private Selection Sunday with his team and without reporters — spoke for the first time about the matchup between the Cats and Broncos.
“Their team is a great team. They have tremendous length. They’re shooting the ball at a tremendous clip. They’ll put five guys on the floor that all really shoot it,” Pope said of Santa Clara. “... Good team. They’ve earned their way to the NCAA Tournament. Every team that you play here is going to be really, really good, so it’s going to be a great challenge for us.”
Kentucky (21-13 overall) is fresh off a run to the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tennessee. The Cats won two games in the conference postseason for the first time since 2018 before falling to top-seeded Florida on Friday afternoon.
Santa Clara (26-8) is making its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 1996, when Naismith Hall of Famer Steve Nash starred at guard. The Broncos are out of the West Coast Conference and reached the title game of that league’s postseason tournament. Santa Clara lost to Gonzaga in the WCC Tournament championship game, marking the third time this season the Bulldogs bested the Broncos.
Gonzaga is the only opponent shared this season by Santa Clara and UK. The Bulldogs throttled Kentucky by 35 points in December in Nashville.
The man leading the Santa Clara program will be a familiar face to Kentucky fans of a certain vintage. Sendek is in his 10th season in charge of the Broncos after previously serving as the head coach at Arizona State, NC State and Miami (Ohio). Before his head coaching career began, Sendek was an assistant coach at Kentucky on Rick Pitino’s staff from 1989 through 1993.
Sendek took each of Miami, NC State and Arizona State to March Madness. This is his first Santa Clara team to make the Big Dance.
What can Kentucky expect on the court from the Broncos?
Three Santa Clara players average double-digit scoring this season. Redshirt sophomore guard Christian Hammond (15.8 points) and senior forward Elijah Mahi (13.9) are starters. Redshirt freshman forward Allen Graves (11.6) comes off the bench. Santa Clara boasts one of the best offenses in the country. The Broncos are ranked 23rd in KenPom in adjusted offensive efficiency.
“Their isolation numbers aren’t huge. They don’t jump off the page at you as much as it does when you watch them play,” Pope said, noting the tough shot-making ability of Santa Clara’s guards and the versatile nature of the Broncos’ bigs.
Graves leads the Broncos in rebounding (6.5 boards per game), followed by German redshirt junior guard Jake Ensminger (5.5) and Mahi (4.7). This rebounding proficiency is especially apparent on the offensive end, where Santa Clara ranks 19th in the nation in offensive rebounding percentage (36.7%).
“When you add in their offensive rebounding, it changes the outlook of their efficiency offensively,” Pope said.
Graves, Hammond and Ensminger each is shooting 38.5% or better from 3-point range on a significant volume of shots. As a team, Santa Clara ranks 23rd in the nation in 3-pointers attempted per game with 29.2 tries from deep.
In the frontcourt, Santa Clara starts Mahi (6-foot-7), Ensminger (6-9) and redshirt sophomore center Bukky Oboye (7-foot-1), with Graves (6-9) offering height off the bench.
In particular, Pope had praise Monday night for Graves, who has been receiving NBA draft buzz.
“(He) has just tremendous numbers,” Pope said of Graves. “He’s really mobile. He’s a good player.”
Oboye’s 39 blocks lead the Broncos. Santa Clara has forced its opponents into turnovers on 20.1% of their possessions, equating to more than 14 turnovers forced per game. Furthermore, the Broncos have come away with a steal on 12.6% of their opponents’ possessions.
“They’ll press all game long. Just a man-to-man, jam-five press, sometimes take away the point guard, but that’s not really where they’re getting most of their steals,” Pope said. “They’re a really heavy gap team. So even though they extend the floor on penetration, they’ll really, really gap you up. So they get a significant portion of their steals from gap steals... They’re aggressive and they’re really handsy. They’ll be just as physical as every team that we played against in the SEC. They fit in exactly that way. They’re going to grab and hold and scratch and claw the entire game, try and stop cutters, kind of wrap you up. So they force turnovers that way, too.”
In Pope’s mind, is there an SEC comparison for these Broncos?
“Slices of so many teams,” Pope said. “We have so many teams in this league that are great offensive rebounding teams, they fit there. We have teams in this league that are terrific steals teams. We have teams that are picking up full man-to-man. (Santa Clara) is a lot of slices of teams in the league.”
