Collin Chandler and UK hope to bounce back tonight against Eastern Illinois. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky fans are not in “panic mode” quite yet because of Tuesday’s 96-88 loss at Louisville, but Big Blue Nation is a bit concerned about coach Mark Pope’s team.
Never mind that an early November road loss to a top 15 team is not a season-breaking game, especially with UK still dealing with some injuries. Louisville coach Pat Kelsey certainly didn’t think UK fans should be worried.
“I want to credit coach Pope and his team and the program they are building there. I firmly believe that his team is a national title contender,” Kelsey said after the game. “And I believe that to be the case for our team, as well.
“It was a big-time college atmosphere, two really good teams competing at a very high level; it was just genuine competition. There wasn’t any extracurricular stuff; it was just good old-fashioned loose balls, hard screens, and dudes playing their butts off. It’s a great rivalry, it’s one of the greatest rivalries in all of collegiate sports, and this was another edition of that.”
Kentucky seemed out of sync most of the game, trailing by 18 points in the first half before rallying and then by 20 points with 12 1/2 minutes to play before cutting the lead to four points with about four minutes to play. However, Louisville was easily the more physical, athletic team most of the game against No. 9 Kentucky.
Pope sort of offered an explanation/reason/excuse for why UK was out of sports at his media availability on Thursday.
“I actually think we did a — you know, I’m not ready to tell the story yet, but at some point, we’ll talk in detail about our pregame experience at Louisville. It was out of character for us, and that’s young and new,” Pope said. “I actually don’t want to keep our emotions in check; I just want to keep them focused, and I want to keep them intentional.
“I want our guys to have all of the emotion — first of all, what’s the point if you can’t have all the emotion? But I don’t want our guys to be run by their emotions. I want to be able to focus their emotion.”
So what the heck happened? Did the team have an altercation with Louisville fans? Was there trouble in the dressing room? Did the Cats have trouble getting to the arena?
Louisville took advantage of a rare capacity crowd that was primed to beat Kentucky, something the Cardinals have not done a lot lately. It was also the first true road game — and only true road game before SEC play in January — for the Cats.
“I know that sounds like 30,000-foot level stuff, but I’m being very specific on that. That’s one of the things with being an athlete — especially being an athlete in Kentucky — is this ability to kind of not dumb down your emotion and not bridle your emotion even, but to just channel it and have it laser-focused,” Pope said.
“It’s intentional emotion, so you’re controlling your emotion. Your emotions are not controlling you. It is a big deal, it’s a learning process, and it’s something that we’ll continue to work on this year.”
Pope is hoping for a much better result tonight against Eastern Illinois to prepare UK for next week’s game against Michigan State in Madison Square Garden.
“We just divorced ourselves from the very simple, basic principles that can help us be successful,” Pope said after the Louisville loss.
Pope backed off the “dumb play” comment he made about his team after the loss and went more with “distracted effort, distracted focus” to explain UK’s uninspired play.
“When you’re under pressure and duress, sometimes you just fall into bad habits and default habits, distracted actions. We spent a lot of time the other night being really, really distracted in a disappointing way — but it’s human nature,’ Pope said. “It’s what it is, it’s what you fight as an athlete, the ability to just kind of get back to focusing on this moment. We didn’t do it very well.”
Pope planned a different type of practice on Thursday to prepare for tonight’s game based on what he learned about his team at Louisville.
“We’re learning so much every single game. This is our first road game, and you learn stuff when you go on the road. Ideally, you learn it through winning,” Pope said. “Sometimes it’s incredibly painful and you learn it through losing, but every experience we have, (we learn).”
12 Responses
Excuses is what it sounds like. Kelsey out coached Mark Pope. Call it whatever anyone wants to call it. Louisville was actually running plays on offense. They didn't shoot contested circus shots. They passed it around until someone was open and they made there open shots. I didn't even see our players putting a hand in there face when they shot the ball. Louisville had wide open looks. When we had open looks we missed our shots. Louisville also played with more effort. Guards win championships. Ask anyone they will tell you the same thing. I'm not too happy about our guard play except Aberdeen and Chandler. Everyone else is playing poorly and for themself. Aberdeen actually has surprised me. I didn't think he was on the level that he is but evidently Florida knew it because the fans are still whining about ol Aberdeen. Guards won Florida there championship last year. They had good post players too. But the guards won it all for them. If this is the Oweh and Lowe we are going to see this season we are in trouble. Another thing we don't play another true road game until SEC play. I don't like this move. You have to get your team used to playing on the road. We looked terrible.
It may be a little premature at this point in the season, but I am of the impression that UL may have best coach in the state. Kelsey is a guy that may be easy to hate, but he does have good coaching credentals and has his team further ahead in year 2 than Pope. He is a emotional, high energy guy and the players seem to feed off that. He had his team ready and Pope didn't. There is no excuse for Pope to not have his team plugged into Team play and has had over a year to do it with many of the same players. Kelsey may prove to be even better recruiter also.
Mike is is mid-November. Let's see how it looks 3 months from now even though injuries may derail Cats
Having a crap ton of money in the bank is probably distracting
Could be right Grant
It would me at that age I guarantee that.
Eastern Illinois is missing 2 starters and only has 9 dressed players, the tallest of which is only 6'7". This will be a laugher which could lead to developing some bad habits…especially in the second half. It's good to see Noah back on the floor making 2 from deep. Garrison, Dioubate, and Moreno are abusing this team's lack of a front line. Oweh still seems to be somewhere else. I am not sure this game is going to do anything to help us get ready for Michigan State other than Noah finding his groove again.
Well. I definitely agree on Oweh he seems uninspired and far from the guy jamming in people's face like last year. As far as Michigan St I view Izzo as the best college basketball Coach followed closely by Pitino .
Kentucky better get really good at figuring out the screen game and how to defend it because they'll get schooled. Michigan St runs good offense .
Everybody knows we have trouble guarding the pick & roll. Why can't they fix this?
No idea.. . The play itself so simple but hard to guard. Stockton and Malone killed people in the NBA for years. Also going under the screen instead of fighting over it at the 3pt line as the Louisville game. Can't go under. Defense is going to be UK's undoing if they can't figure things out.
Oweh's contributions to this team, last year and this, are overstated. Last year, Oweh's individual efficiency was 0.175 ppp which was only the 8th best on that team.
This year, Oweh is only the 9th most efficient player on the team.
Can you say, OVER RATED?
Doesn't seem as interested for whatever reason
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