It is easy to get caught up in the week-to-week rollercoaster of this basketball season. One day, the sky is falling, the next day the Cats are world-beaters. But while fans and analysts are obsessing over the current record, Mark Pope is looking at the horizon. And he sees something the rest of us might be missing.
Speaking after the massive road win in Fayetteville, Pope didn't sound like a coach just trying to survive the SEC grind. He sounded like a man who knows exactly how the movie ends.
The prediction
"I think we have a great future this season," Pope declared. "I think we're going to win a lot of games and have an epic run."
That isn't coach-speak. That is what he believes.
For a second-year head coach to look at a 15-7 team, one that has taken its fair share of beatings, and predict an "epic run" takes a special level of belief. But Pope seems convinced that the adversity this team has faced isn't a flaw; it's the prologue.
The story matters
"Maybe the story about this team is going to be even more important than that with what they're doing right now," Pope said. "It's pretty awesome."
Pope understands better than anyone that the stories are what make Kentucky basketball legendary.
- We talk about the "Unforgettables" because they stayed when they could have left.
- We talk about Patrick Sparks and Scott Padgett's 3's.
- We talk about the Goose game, Rupps Runt's, and so many other great moments in Kentucky history.
Great stories require conflict. They require "heat and hate," as Pope put it earlier in his presser. This team has certainly had plenty of that. But if Pope is right, the conflict is just setting the stage for the climax.
Belief vs. hope
There is a difference between hoping you can win and believing you will.
Most coaches in Pope's position would be talking about "taking it one game at a time." Pope is talking about an epic run. He is telling his locker room and Big Blue Nation that the best chapters of this book haven't been written yet.
And after watching them fight through the chaos in Arkansas, it's starting to look like he might just be right. The book is only halfway done.
The rest is still unwritten.