Kentucky beat North Carolina Central by 36. They put up 103 points, shot 61 percent from the field and finally looked like a functioning basketball team again.
And Mark Pope walked into the postgame and basically said: that’s still not close to good enough.
All week he’d been talking about standards, effort and “resetting” after the Gonzaga embarrassment. Against NC Central, he rode guys who were playing hard, lit into others who weren’t, and afterward he didn’t pretend the blowout fixed anything.
“We just have a standard that we have to live up to and we’re not,” Pope said. “We’re not and we have to. And so we’ll keep fighting until we do.”
Mark Pope says Kentucky basketball doesn't 'know how to compete yet'
The most jarring line of the night came when Pope tried to explain where this team actually is.
“We have good guys. We have competitive guys,” he said. “We don’t know really what it means to compete yet, which is terrifying. But we will. We’re going to learn. We’re going to learn fast.”
That’s not exactly coach-speak. That’s a coach looking at a 6–4 record, a 35-point loss to Gonzaga, and a fanbase booing in Nashville and saying out loud what everyone else has been thinking.
The NC Central game had flashes of what Kentucky is supposed to be:
- 103–67 final
- 39-of-64 from the field (61%)
- 12-of-29 from three (41%)
- 27 assists vs just 9 turnovers
- 34 fast-break points
- 52–30 edge in points in the paint
Collin Chandler finished with 8 assists to just one turnover. Otega Oweh put up 21 points, 7 rebounds and 4 steals. Jasper Johnson dropped 22 off the bench and led the team at +30.
Pope liked the sharing. He liked how they handled zone looks and changing defenses. But every time he praised something, he slapped a big asterisk on it.
“We just need it to carry over into more competitive games,” he said more than once.
The competitiveness piece clearly gnaws at him. Pope admitted the edge he keeps talking about in practice hasn’t shown up when the lights flip on.
“It hasn’t translated yet,” he said. “Yet is a powerful word, guys. It hasn’t translated yet, but it will. We’re going to be so proud of this team. We’re not yet, but we will be.”
He even put the blame squarely on his own shoulders.
“I’ve done a poor job of getting that out of our guys in games, which has been monumentally frustrating for me,” Pope said. “But we’ll get it out. We’re going to find it or we’re going to die trying.”
That’s as blunt as it gets. He’s not confused. He’s telling you exactly what has to change:
- Guys have to “get outside of themselves.”
- They have to start “living and dying for this team and this gym with this fan base.”
- When things go bad in big games, they have to be able to tap into something deeper instead of folding.
For one night, Kentucky looked like a team having fun again. The ball moved. The bench produced. The fast break was alive. It was the first time in a while the numbers matched what Pope’s offense is supposed to be.
But the man in charge isn’t fooled. He sees the same record the selection committee will see. He knows NC Central isn’t Gonzaga, Louisville, Michigan State or Indiana. He knows the real test of that “powerful word” yet is coming fast.
“We’re going to learn,” Pope said. “And we’re going to learn fast.”
If he’s wrong, this season is going to get very loud, very quickly. If he’s right, this might be the night they finally stopped lying to themselves and started climbing out of the hole.