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What does a coach say after his team loses a game by 20 points when it was about a 10-point favorite going into the game?
No, this is not trying to guess what Mark Stoops said after a loss to South Carolina early in the football season.This was Mark Pope after an 85-65 loss to Ohio State in New York’s Madison Square Garden Saturday in what was the first big disappointment of the Pope era.
“A ton of credit to Ohio State. They beat us in pretty much every facet of the game,” Pope said. “And they deserve a lot of credit. Congratulations to them.”
Agreed. Ohio State was the best team from start to finish and Kentucky had no answer for Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton. He had 30 points, including 22 in the second half. Wherever he wanted to go with the ball, he went.
Ohio State shot 57 percent as a team even though it went 4-for-15 from 3-point range.
On his postgame radio show, Pope said UK got “punched in the face and did not respond well” to the type of play it will see almost every game once SEC play starts.
He said “Thornton made every play” and blamed himself for a “bad schematic decision” even though he explained UK’s job was to either keep Thornton on one side of the floor or handle him one-on-one if he could not be contained to one side.
“We couldn’t do either one,” Pope said. “It was just a bad schematic decision on my part. We were trying to fix some things where we were struggling and tonight it was not a good fix.”
Kentucky looked lethargic and out of sync most of the game, especially after point guard Lamont Butler missed almost half of the first half after getting his second foul.
Pope, the eternal optimist, understood it was a bad game but it is not the end of the season.
“There’s a lot of ways we can get a lot better,” Pope said. “I felt like our guys were trying to find some juice, find some energy, find some fight. We just fell really short.”
13 Responses
UK doesn’t have much of an inside game..
Ok, so BBN got a big lump of coal for Christmas. Thankfully, we are at the Christmas break with a cupcake game on New Year’s Eve and don’t play Florida until January 4, and that will be up Ruppl That’s the good news. Now for the bad…what happened to our fight? We let a guy who averages 15 ppg go off for 30! Butler had 33 against Louisville and only managed 4 last night? He can’t use the ankle as an excuse, so what happened? I am not sure I have an answer for that, but I am pretty sure we will see that kind of Koma Kozi defense from everyone else we play this year. We will have to bring more energy, more want to, and much more confidence to our remaining games.
So what do we do? First, we have to play more zone. We have 2 weeks to get in sync on that 1-3-1 defense and need to go to it early in the first half. The better teams will make adjustments at half-time, so we also need to also have a 2-3 zone ready to go in the second half. Alternating between the 2 zones with a little man to man for confusion’s sake may cover up our deficiencies on defense. I thought Butler and Oweh would be lock down defenders and I think they still can be. Williams is not the rim protecter I hoped he would be, but he could be with more effort. Brea, Perry, and Almonor are liabilities on defense, hence the reason to play more zone. We simply were not ready for the fight Ohio State brought to us.
Playing zone will make it necessary for our wings and guards to rebound more and get into transition AFTER we have the ball. Williams and Garrison need to own the boards on both ends when we play man to man meaning they head to the basket after they make their pass from out top.
As for the offense, for a while I could swear that DJ Wagoner was back on our roster. How many forced drives to the basket with wild shots did we puke up last night? We have to go back to being a pass first team that plays through our center up top. Then Butler needs to go screen for Robinson to pop out to the backcourt arc with Butler fading to the frontcourt corner. Oweh needs to go down and come back up to the arc off a screen from Carr and Carr needs to go to the basket. With those screens and movement, someone will be open for a 3 point shot or make another pass for a better 3 point shot or hit an open man at the basket for 2. We are standing around waiting to receive a pass and then play hero ball. This is what every good team is doing…screens and cuts with a second and third pass to get the best open shot. Standing around will result in contested drives to the basket and 30% shooting. If we are screening, moving, and passing we will get more open 3s which we can make…we just have to re-commit to doing this and not revert back to old habits. We can make 3s that come off of a second or third pass. It’s hard to make them off of just one pass or worse yet, no pass.
We have 2 weeks to get our minds and bodies ready for the rock fights we will see in the SEC. Coaches are telling their guys to be smart with their fouls. Nudges, grabs, slaps, and contest every drive to the basket. Make the refs blow the whistle. They will grow weary of doing in the last 10 minutes of the game. We must stop the ball outside. Once a man gets by us, it’s 2 on 1 and the Buckeyes wore us out with that. Maybe we should play more zone???
It was just our second loss, but expect a big drop in the rankings, probably down to 15 or 16. No big deal, maybe that will fire us up to be ready for the fight that is coming our way. Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida are playing top shelf basketball. The rest of the league is playing much better than we did last night. That was our wake-up call. Now it’s time to answer the bell.
Carr is the most efficient player on this team, and the lack of an inside game is due to a perimeter game that either drives or hurls up a long contested 3 without running offense designed to maximize Carr’s ability inside.
Early in the season, this team was a team. Lately, this team has been a collection of individuals each pursuing his own headlines.
Very sad development, and it is past time for Coach Pope to restore a team attitude.
Looking like an 0-3 SEC start at this point, and unless they right the ship, this team will struggle to win 20 games.
Hope you are wrong about 0-3 Professor but your numbers are usually spot on
Larry, thanks, and of course as always, that’s why they play the games.
I see it this way:
Fla @ UK: Fla by 1 1/2 56%
UK @ UGA: UGA by 4 61%
UK @ MSU: MSU by 4 1/2 61%
2 weeks ago, I viewed each of these games as probable wins. The quality of play has been in steady decline for about 3 weeks, Gonzaga notwithstanding. The decline indicated by a 20 point neutral court loss to a so-so Ohio State team is huge.
There is little rest for the weary who must traverse this SEC schedule. Standing today with 10 wins, and an 11th win coming at Brown’s expense this week. To get to 20 wins in the regular season, UK must win 9 of 18 SEC games. Today, I think it is more likely that UK will end the season with less than 20 wins than more than 20 wins. I suppose if pressed to select, I would take the under at this moment.
Why is it that the ex UK guys always are able to kick our butts when they play us? Ohio State had the best Center, PG, Game plan, and Coach. It has been a very long time since we have had a good inside game or anyone that could make a jump shot in close. I have NEVER seen so many missed shot in close. There were 4 straight bricks at the basket in the 2nd half. Our interior D was just as bad. They were only stopped at the rim a couple of times. When you have no inside offense or defense you have no chance. These guys sure know how to blow a good holiday weekend.
We have to get back to passing first, setting screens and popping out and cutting in, making a second pass, and sometimes a third pass…that is what results in an easy shot. We will also have to play a lot of zone. We have 2 weeks to go back to the basics and commit to doing them.
If you run that play every time on offense by halftime the starters are going to be done. Screens and being aggressive absolutely drains your energy. This is why we don’t run this as much because Pope isn’t going as deep and often to his bench and the starters can’t do this every play.
I just don’t see any toughness in any of them.They will run into “Prison Ball” in the SEC and that’s No Blood No Foul! They played Scared against Ohio State and it showed by missing so many layups and even dunks! On the defensive side Not one of them will try to take a Charge. Like I said they played scared of getting a little bruised. Maybe take off their panties and put on some Big Boy Britches!
We are struggling simply because the shots aren’t falling. It has nothing to do with schemes or coaching or anything like that! We were hitting 3 pointers at over 45% a clip as a team and Brea was shooting 70% at the 3 point line. Then reality caught up in number averages. We went from shooting great to shooting terrible and that is all your philosophies in a bottle! If we even shoot 40% from 3 and 50% from 2 we win this game. That’s it and that is all. We probably left 24-30 points off the board in the paint alone. Then add a couple more 3 pointers for say 9 more points. Your already looking at 33-40 point difference in our point total. The shots just aren’t falling. Nothing has really changed but the momentum of made buckets. What happened was we got spoiled by thinking this is a great 3 point shooting team. Which it is better than average at shooting but when Brea is off Robinson is off Butler is off and we don’t have Kriisa who is normally a pretty good shooter but he is streaky just like the rest of the team. Brea is the best shooter on the team but at times he has a hard time creating a shot. Oweh is also a streaky shooter who really thrives driving to the basket creating contact. What hurts Williams is his response time. We definitely need to get Carr at least 3-5 more shots every game. You live by the 3 you die by the 3. We died by the 3 they just weren’t falling. I’m not concerned one bit about this game I think next game will be different because there is no way we shoot that bad 4 games in a row. Bad thing is SEC play is starting and this is the best the SEC has ever been. If you don’t bring your A game you will lose. My expectation is the same as it was before the year started. Ill be happy with 25 wins and going to at least the sweet 16. That would be a great first year for only having a very short time to assemble a entire roster. He will have the right pieces at the end of the year and with the freshman he has coming in to make next years team much better and will get only better and better every year. This is his first year with a brand new team. Your going to have nights like against Ohio State. We will also get blown out a couple of games in the SEC as well. Your not going to have a great night every night. I still think we finish in the top 5 of the SEC. Which is remarkable given that the Alabamas the Floridas and Tennessees and Auburns have all had coaches for multiple years and have built there rosters exactly how they want them from scratch. They have taken who they wanted. Pope had to take what he could get it and make them gel and we will still be one of the best teams in the SEC. That says alot to me. We will be fine. I think this team will hit there stride in SEC play. We could even go on a nice winning spree if we start making our shots. That’s what’s wrong with this team they just aren’t making buckets!
Sadly, the 3 projected losses to start SEC play are accurately speculated based on actual performance data prepared by the Professor.
The decline since a marvelous 1st 5 games has been a steady fracturing of the TEAM Coach Pope & his staff selected and molded. It has been the choice of several players to primarily go solo and do a little team play to try to disguise their selfishness. The result is a fractures group of players. It only takes one rotten apple to spoil a good bunch!
Bob Talent displayed a selfish attitude when he transferred to UK for the 1966-‘67 season when he damaged the returning players from Rupps Runts. The arrogance to think he would be the main star instead of All-Americans Pat Riley and Louie Dampier sadly reminds me of how a few players have turned away from the amazing TEAM Coach Pope built in a hurry!
No inside game when some of the perimeter players are selfish.
Hey, at least we didn’t throw this clunker 1 week earlier (vs UL).
Everybody looks bad when the shots aren’t falling. That said, we were over-rated at #4 anyway, but this game points to some troubling trends.