In the first two years of the Mark Pope era, Kentucky has been up and down from half to half. The team has tremendous wins and bad losses. The consistency that makes a great program is nowhere to be found, but what is around to be found is a dubious honor after the Texas A&M loss.
Mark Pope is now 20-15 with one more SEC game to go in conference play since being hired by Kentucky. That is not good; it turns out it is on the verge of being really bad.
Mark Pope's SEC record is not acceptable at Kentucky
Kentucky, as a program, is at the top of the SEC in nearly every category, and while the rest of the conference has taken leaps and bounds, Kentucky seems to be stuck in the mud. Look at the combined SEC record by previous Kentucky head coaches during their first 2 years:
John Calipari- 24-8
Billy Gillispie- 20-12
Tubby Smith- 25-7
Rick Pitino- 24-12
Eddie Sutton- 27-9
Joe B. Hall- 23-13
Adolph Rupp- 17-3
John Mauer- 15-5
Basil Hayden- 1-6
Ray Eklund- 8-0
Clarence Applegran- 6-2
George Buchheit- 3-6 (no conference record in his first 2 years as coach)
Pope will now have the most SEC losses through the first 2 years of any coach in Kentucky basketball history, yes even more than Rick Pitino who was on probation. Again, the SEC is much harder in basketball now than it was previously, but that is no excuse for all the losses.
If Florida beats Kentucky Saturday, Pope will have tied Billy Gillispie for the fewest SEC wins since Adolph Rupp took the job and went 17-3 in the then Southern conference. Kentucky has not this much in the SEC as a conference.
That is not the kind of history you want to be making as a head coach.
And yes, the injuries have hurt this team, but with a base player salary of around $20 million, the team does not have an excuse to be this bad.