One big thing Mark Pope must fix for Kentucky to take a step forward in 2026-27
Through two seasons, there has been an odd pattern to the Mark Pope coaching era at Kentucky.
Under Pope, UK men’s basketball has fared respectably against the best opponents.
Against the least-heralded foes they face, the Cats have been perfect.
However, the UK has seen both its seasons under Pope sabotaged by mediocre results against middling competition.
As Pope prepares to enter a Year 3 that could be pivotal to his tenure as Kentucky coach, the UK head man and his program must find their way out of the Cats’ own peculiar version of “the trap of the middle.”
Since Pope left BYU to return to his college alma mater as head coach, Kentucky has gone 13-16 against teams ranked in the AP Top 25.
By UK’s regal historical standard, that is not great — but it’s not horrible.
Through 29 games, Pope’s record against ranked opponents is better than UK’s 11-18 mark against the AP Top 25 in the final 29 such contests under the previous Kentucky head coaching regime.
In 2024-25, Pope went 8-6 vs. the AP Top 25, including victories over eventual NCAA champion Florida and Final Four entrant Duke.
This past season, Kentucky was only 5-10 vs. the AP Top 25. The 2025-26 Cats got off to a woeful start against the best teams, losing five of their first six vs. ranked foes.
UK went 4-2 against the AP Top 25 in the middle of its season, including road wins at border-state rival Tennessee in Knoxville and over boss Hog John Calipari and his merry band of Razorbacks in Fayetteville.
Down the stretch, Kentucky lost its last three games vs. ranked opponents, with one of those losses coming to SEC regular-season champion Florida in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals.
Against UK’s primary men’s basketball rivals, Pope has gone a combined 9-7 vs. Arkansas (1-1), Duke (1-0), Florida (1-3), Indiana (1-0), Kansas (0-0), Louisville (1-1), North Carolina (0-1) and Tennessee (4-1).
Again, by UK standards, that is not stellar, but it isn’t bad.
Under Pope, Kentucky has so far been flawless in games against foes who come from leagues far down the college sports food chain from the power conferences (I count Gonzaga as a power-conference-caliber program, not as a team from a lower league).
In “buy games” played in Lexington, plus two NCAA Tournament tilts vs. Troy (2025) and Santa Clara (2026), Kentucky is a combined 17-0 over the past two seasons.
That may not sound particularly noteworthy until you recall that, over the final five seasons of the Calipari coaching era at UK (2019-24), the Cats lost games at Rupp Arena to Evansville, Richmond and UNC-Wilmington as well as NCAA tourney contests vs. Saint Peter’s and Oakland.
In that context, Pope having so far avoided such defeats is not a small thing.
Alas, it is “the middle” that has confounded Kentucky so far in the Pope era.
In 2024-25, UK finished 7-5 against teams that were in the top 21 of the final NET Rankings.
Against the teams that rated 22 through 50 in the final NET, Kentucky was 5-7.
Last year, the most damaging week of the Cats’ season came after UK gave a respectable account of itself in falling 84-77 at then-No. 5 Florida on Feb. 14 in a game in which the SEC lead was on the line.
In the week immediately following that defeat to Todd Golden’s Gators, Kentucky took an 86-78 loss to Georgia at Rupp Arena and an excruciating 75-74 road loss at Auburn.
That’s the same Georgia that finished the regular season No. 33 in the NET prior to being humiliated 102-77 by Saint Louis in the NCAA Tournament round of 64.
It is the same Auburn that finished the regular season No. 37 in the NET with a record of 17-16 prior to winning the NIT.
Those two defeats and a March 3 road loss at Texas A&M — which finished No. 43 in the NET Rankings — served to dissipate the momentum Kentucky had built by winning eight of its first 11 league games.
Injuries have been a substantial part of UK’s problems against middling foes late in each of Pope’s seasons.
In 2024-25, Kentucky players missed a combined 50 games due to injury.
Last season, it was worse, with UK players losing a total of 77 games because of injuries.
Maybe the law of averages will provide Pope with a relatively healthy roster throughout 2026-27. If so, Kentucky just getting to the back half of its schedule with its team intact could help mitigate some of the losses-to-mediocre-teams problem that has undermined the past two seasons.
Regardless, if UK is to take the significant step upward that the Big Blue Nation so yearns to see in Year 3, Pope has to figure out how to better manage the middle.
