Mark Pope Didn’t See Selfish Play in Alabama Loss

Vicky Graff Photo

Kentucky coach Mark Pope has been consistently positive when talking about his team and praising his players for trying to do what it takes to win.

However, he seemed a little miffed after the 102-97 loss to Alabama on Saturday when asked if he felt some one-on-one play “starting creeping” in late in the game when Alabama built a nine-point lead.

“I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel that at all,” Pope said. “I don’t think it was selfish play at all. I felt like it was exactly the opposite. I felt like we needed to be a little hungrier.”

Pope rattled off UK’s assist to turnover ratio and credited Alabama for being able to create mismatches.

“What happens is the way Alabama guards is they are going to switch or if you get a ball screen or get a downhill action, they will switch or switch the ball screen or they will down and weaken it and kind of sprint to recover and feed back,” Pope said. “What you do is get all the way to the rim with two feet. A lot of time it’s a mismatch and a lot of time its a point guard against a five at the rim offensively and defensively and they are really diligent.”

Pope felt his players did get “stagnant” late in the game on offense but it was not a matter of selfish play and going one-on-one.

“It was guys actually not earning plays for themselves enough. That’s how you attack a defense like they showed. We just didn’t do it well enough consistently enough,” Pope said.  “Listen, our guys fought and they battled.  We just didn’t play that well.  We still scored 97 points, we just didn’t play great, right?  

“When I say there is stuff left on the table there is that whole section of the game that’s left on the table that it hurts us so badly right now that we got to live with this.  But the one thing our guys are good at is they are good at getting better and we will punish teams in the future that guard us like this even more than we did tonight.  We just are not that far along.  Every game gives you a new challenge and we just couldn’t execute that space in the game.”

Pope made sure it was clear he totally disagreed with the selfish perspective put to him in the question.

“I’ve got beautiful guys, my guys are fighting for each other.  I know you are not trying to push that narrative.  There is zero part of my guys that are in this for themselves at all.  That doesn’t exist at all. These guys are fighting for each other.  I appreciate you guys, thanks for being here,” Pope said to end his press conference.