Even when he gets frustrated Mark Pope admits there is normally consistency to calls officials make. (Vicky Graff Photo)
If you know Mark Pope, you know he believes in analytics. That’s why it was no surprise Monday night on his weekly call-in radio show when he noted that the UK staff is spending an “insane amount of time” studying foul calls.
“We’ve gone back and kind of categorized every foul that has been called on us over the last five games,” Pope said referring to UK’s five Southeastern Conference games. “We’re seeing some trends where we can really aggressively attack and make some strides, and that’s really important for us to do.”
Kentucky was significantly outscored at the foul line in losses to Georgia and Alabama and Pope said UK’s review “found some trends” that could help the team.
“I’m not actually going to talk about those publicly because I’m sure that Vanderbilt (Kentucky’s opponent on Saturday) is watching right now. But it’s given us some real direction. I think there’s a good chance that we have a chance to make some massive improvements,” the Kentucky coach said.
Pope is coaching in the SEC for the first time. He does not have a player — other than Jaxson Robinson the first two years of his career — who has played for a SEC team. Figuring out SEC officiating has been a learning process already.
“You talk about learning this league and learning the whistle, that’s a genuine thing,” Pope said on the radio show. “There are times when I just internally lose my mind with some of the officiating. But the truth is that usually when you go back and watch the film, the officiating might not be what you’re used to or how you would correlate things with the book, but there is some consistency.
“The consistency may be surprising to us, but it’s teaching us a lot and we’re growing a lot. We’ve got to grow really quickly in that area, but if you think about our five conference wins, the two games that we’ve struggled in are the two games where we’ve gotten really, really abused and we’ve failed to perform in the free throw disparity category.
“That’s a place where we can really grow. I love finding places where we can grow. I actually love growing. I love our team growing.”
He told a fan who asked how much UK worked on free throws that the Cats were “spending a lot of time” doing that in practice.
“We’re trying to spend more time on not giving the other team opportunities to shoot free throws. Right now, that’s going to be a heavy focus,” he said.
