Mark Pope is Ready for Cats to get Exposed

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Kentucky coach Mark Pope can’t wait for the season to officially begin. Neither can the Wildcats.

“I have a group of players that are incredibly curious,” Pope said during the Southeastern Conference Tip-Off Media Days Tuesday in Birmingham. “They’re veteran, veteran guys. They’ve won a ton of games, and they’ve all done it in different ways. But I have a locker room that’s incredibly curious.”

The team’s eagerness, Pope said, “comes from humility” a trait that he appreciates from his squad.

“It’s in this place of humility and curiosity, and it’s how when you’re blessed with those two character traits and you embrace them, you have a chance to grow really, really fast,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of guys that are trying desperately to hold on to a way they did it somewhere else or how they’ve done it before.

“I have a bunch of guys that are like, okay, we’re on a mission right now to come together kind of under one banner, and so it’s been pretty smooth sailing in that sense.”

Kentucky will play a pair of exhibition games against Kentucky Wesleyan (Oct. 23) and Minnesota State (Oct. 29) during the two weeks before Pope makes his official debut as coach of the Wildcats against Wright State on Nov. 4.

Pope expects his team to get exposed during the next two weeks and doesn’t mind the mask being peeled off.

“You play against each other, you’re playing a similar style because everybody is playing the same style in our gym, so you’re just hungry to get exposed,” Pope said. “Show us what we don’t know yet about our team. We have two exhibitions against two teams. We’re playing the defending national champ Division II team, and so we’re going to get exposed.

“We’re actually dying to get in the film room and be like, okay, show us what we’re not doing well, where are the holes and cracks in what we do so we can go fix them and build them back up.”