Mark Pope sat down with Tom Leach after his team's worst road loss to Vandy since 2008 and said what every single person in Big Blue Nation was thinking.
Kentucky basketball got bullied. Plain and simple.
In a game where the Wildcats were supposed to be the aggressor against a depleted Vanderbilt team, they were the ones who looked shell-shocked. Pope didn't make excuses for it.
"We just got punched in the face early and we never responded," Pope said after the 80-55 beatdown. "Our offense was so dysfunctional... We had no answer and no response."
The soft label returns
The most damning quote of the night wasn't about missed shots or turnovers. It was about toughness.
"In every aspect of the game, we were the less physical team," Pope admitted.
Let that sink in. Vanderbilt was missing one of the most talented guards in the SEC. They are a smaller team across the board. And yet, they pushed Kentucky around for 40 minutes.
"It was going to be really important for us to have an impact on the offensive glass," Pope said. "Ours was incredibly negligible."
Kentucky basketball left searching for answers
Pope seemed just as baffled as the fans. He pointed out that this isn't the identity this group has shown lately.
"This is not who we are," he insisted. "We are coming off the longest winning streak of any team in the SEC."
That might be true, but tonight, they looked like a team that had never played together. They finished with 8 assists and 15 turnovers in a game that they didn't look interested in winning.
Pope noted that to be good, you have to be the team that hits first. Tonight, Kentucky was the heavy bag.
"If we are going to be good... we're going to have to spend more time as that type of team."
Right now? They are miles away from it. And the schedule just keeps getting harder.