Kentucky coach Mark Pope wants his players to come at opponents in waves to where foes cannot even breathe. (Vicky Graff Photo)
I can still remember what might have been former coach Rick Pitino’s signature moment at Kentucky — and it came in a loss.
Kentucky lost by 55 points at Kansas in Pitino’s first season but he would not change his pressing, fast-paced style.
Now new Kentucky coach Mark Pope is sending the same message to his team and UK fans.
Kentucky clearly wore down Duke in its 77-72 win with the way Pope not only used his depth but forced the pace from start to finish.
“If you come to play Kentucky we’re not going away, we’re not backing down,” Pope said. “You’re gonna have your hands full. You’re not going to be able to breathe for 40 straight minutes. We’re not changing. We’re going to keep coming and coming.”
Pope wants his team to always be aggressive and impose its will on opponents.
“We don’t like being rejected. We don’t like coming up short. We don’t like it. When we’re not successful at something, we kind of wanna walk away and do something different,” Pope said. “That’s what I was talking about postgame, I think our last game, about emotional resilience.
“This ability to be like, man, I’ve got on the glass seven times. I’m getting elbowed in the face every single time, and on time number eight, am I gonna go to the glass as hard as I can? Am I gonna go time number nine with no fruit for my labor? I’ve gone nine times and come up empty. Why am I going to waste the energy to go a 10th time?
“The tenth time is when you have the breakthrough. Don’t turn back. That’s emotional resilience. That’s what champs do. They get hit and hit again, they come up short, but they refuse to stop coming. The whole idea of us coming in waves.”
2 Responses
Once this team truly embraces the depth it has and goes all out knowing they will get a rest soon is what will change this team from good to great. Once everyone trusts Pope’s system and stops thinking about how do I score and keeps moving the ball to the open man who then puts up the shot without thinking, this will be a top 5 team. It’s a matter of buying into Pope’s system…some have and some have one foot in the door and one foot out. It’s a different thing to play for the name on the front of your jersey instead of the name on the back of it. This team is getting there. The Clemson and Gonzaga games will be the litmus test to see who has gone all in and who is still playing for themself.
This team will go as far as the 3 pointer will take us. The beautiful thing about the duke game is one of our best players was having a cold shooting night. Did he still shoot 15 shots?? No he didn’t start forcing shots he started playing better defense and looked for his team mates who had the hot hand. That’s very steam oriented and its dead in this age of basketball. Seeing that gave me a feeling that this team will do whatever it takes to win and I love that about them.!