Kentucky basketball’s Mark Pope on team looking for competitive spirit
Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball coach Mark Pope says his team will be really special if it can find its “competitive spirit.”
LEXINGTON — The standard for Kentucky basketball is excellence. Some detractors might point out that means a standard that is set — almost — impossibly high. Such is the pressure that accompanies being the winningest program in the history of the sport, with eight national titles, 49 SEC regular-season championships and 31 conference tournament crowns.
No one is more intimately familiar with what the Wildcats‘ fervid fan base demands than the man tasked with returning them to the pinnacle of the sport.
“Well, if we win every game, then we’ll be right there close to the standard,” UK coach Mark Pope told The Courier Journal during a recent interview, a smile spreading across his face as he continued. “If we can win every game, we would almost reach the standard that makes Kentucky so beautiful, right?”
While perfection is difficult — no Division I men’s college basketball team has posted an undefeated season since Indiana in 1976 — it’s not unobtainable. UK should know: It accomplished the feat during the 1953-54 campaign, going 25-0 under legendary coach Adolph Rupp.
More than seven decades later, Pope aims to live up to expectations in his first season on the job. Even if that means an undefeated campaign isn’t in the cards. The bare minimum, however, is an NCAA Tournament appearance. And, Kentucky fans hope, advancing out of the opening weekend of March Madness for the first time since 2019.
For the Wildcats to return to their traditional place in the sport’s highest echelon, here are three questions they must answer during the 2024-25 season:
All of UK’s hopes for a successful debut season under Pope hinge upon answering this question. If this squad of 12 newcomers doesn’t develop chemistry and play as a cohesive unit, nothing else matters. Not how fluid the Wildcats may look offensively. Or how many 3-pointers they can launch per game.
Building a connection — quickly — is an indispensable component.
It’s doubly important given the circumstances: Not a single member of the team has played together. Jaxson Robinson is the only Wildcat who’s played for Pope, suiting up for the coach the past two seasons at BYU. And no player can claim they know what it’s like to play for Kentucky. After former coach John Calipari left for Arkansas, every scholarship player on the 2023-24 roster headed for the exits as well, whether it was to the transfer portal, the NBA or simply because their college eligibility ran out.
For what it’s worth, Pope and players attested that during summer workouts, they were swiftly building on-court bonds. And off-court friendships. But scrimmaging among teammates during the summer is entirely different than walking into a hostile environment in a live game — with all the trappings that entails at Kentucky, the program fellow SEC schools, and their fans, relish beating.
If the on-court chemistry is as natural as players claimed this summer, it should be evident early: UK faces a top-10 Duke squad, featuring presumed No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg, in Game 3.
Rapport blossoming from the get-go not only would be a welcome development for the Wildcats.
It will make answering subsequent questions easier.
It’s a near certainty Kentucky won’t have any problem putting the ball in the basket. The team Pope and his first-year staff has assembled is flush with talent offensively, particularly those with a penchant for long-range accuracy.
There are more question marks defensively.
Still, there’s reason to believe UK will be solid in that area — if not, potentially, a strength by season’s end.
The importance Pope is placing on defense was reflected in his roster construction: His first four transfer portal additions — guards Lamont Butler and Otega Oweh, forward Amari Williams and center Brandon Garrison — were more recognized for their defensive prowess than offensive playmaking at their previous schools.
Those four are why Evan Miyakawa, a basketball statistician who owns and operates the analytics website EvanMiya.com, is buying as much stock as he can in the Wildcats’ defense.
“The top four guys or so in defensive rating all grade out as being a lot better than most of the players Kentucky has had, even in recent seasons. … And I think that’s really going to show that this team is going to be much more reliable defensively than maybe we’ve seen Kentucky teams be previously,” Miyakawa told The Courier Journal earlier this year.
Provided the offense plays up to expectations, it will give time for UK’s defense to find its footing.
By the end of the regular season, that might make Kentucky a squad no opponent wants to face.
When Pope was asked what questions his first UK club needed to answer to achieve its goals, he didn’t bring up rebounding. Or defense. Or anything tangible, actually.
“All the things we see on the court are a result of the foundation that they’re standing on,” he said. “And so the things we’re looking for on our team is, we’re looking for our competitive spirit — like if that’s an unquenchable competitive spirit, then we’re going to be really special.
“A competitive spirit that knows no softening, right? If we’re together — like if our guys are caring more about each other and more about this team and this state and the name on the front of his jersey than they are about their own agendas — which is really hard to get to — then we’re going to be really special.”
Pope wasn’t done.
“And if our guys are believers, then we’re going to be really special,” he said. “If they’re believing in what we do and how we do it — in each other and in themselves — we’re going to be really special.
“So I know those things seem like they’re 30,000-foot (views), but they are. There’s a reason that they’re 30,000-foot (views): Because those are the principles that you build on to have really great results.”
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
