On the same day that Kentucky was revealed as a No. 3 seed in the first NCAA Tournament bracket preview, the Wildcats up-and-down SEC season took a dip in Austin as head coach Mark Pope saw his team wilt down the stretch of a game that Big Blue controlled for most of the night. After the disappointing 82-78 loss to the Longhorns, Kentucky's head man met with the media to explain why his team couldn't close the deal.
"Great, great environment," Pope said. "Takes a really tough and physical...congratulations to Rodney [Terry]. They certainly earned the win. And you know, I thought our guys fought really hard. I thought we really fought. I thought we really competed, and I thought we did not execute the way you need to down the stretch to win a game."
It was the final four minutes where this game got away from the Wildcats. Pope's team led 69-64 at the 3:55 mark but a 14-1 Texas run would put the home team ahead for good. Throughout his postgame remarks, Pope lamented his team's inability to make winning plays down the stretch.
"We just, we just didn't execute well," he said. "So it was kind of a little mess of problems. You know, we're up five, and we give up an offensive rebound, put back in one, and then we come down the floor and we make one out of two free throws and then we give up a mid-range up, which is shot that we would traditionally be like, 'Okay, we're gonna live with that challenge, mid-range jumper'. And then we come back down, and we turn the ball over on, on an entry that was just, just a killer, that just really killed us at 71-70.
"And then, and then, you know, we, then we gave up an offensive rebound inexplicably on a free throw. That was another dagger, and it kind of went from there, and we just couldn't quite, you know, one of the things that has been really special about our team is we've done a great job of kind of being in the moment, being on to the next play. It's been a really good character of our team, and we just weren't our normal selves in that aspect of the game in the last three minutes and 45 seconds."
Some wondered if the emotional win over Tennessee earlier in the week took a toll on the Wildcats in Austin. Picking up a win over a rugged opponent like the Volunteers, especially while missing several key players, is always tough, and then to have to go on the road against another dangerous SEC team just a few days later makes for an even bigger challenge. However, Pope did not use that as an excuse.
"I don't think we had an emotional letdown at all," he said. "I think the guys came to battle. I think we knew what we were up against, and I think our guys were really fixed on the challenge. I felt like our emotional energy was great the whole night. I thought our guys were here to compete and fight. I thought we had, you know, guys step up and make important plays. And so I was, I'm really, actually proud of our guys' effort, for sure. Our execution stunk, you know, in the last four minutes, absolutely on both sides of the ball and really, it wasn't even our execution. It was partly our execution, but our presentness was poor."
Similarly, Pope didn't blame the loss on the absence of key players such as Jaxson Robinson or Lamont Butler. He said that even though his team was shorthanded against Texas, the Wildcats had enough firepower to win that game.
"Yeah, we're not leaving any space for that," he said. "Like, I have a good team. Like the guys on the court are good players, and we're good enough to win, and these guys have proven that. We just didn't do it in the last 3:45 tonight. That's just it.
"It's just tonight, and it's super painful. It's not acceptable. All those things are true, but we have the guys we need to win, and we're going to figure out a way to do it and we did it for, you know, for 36 minutes. We just couldn't do it for the last four, that's just the truth. That's just the fact. And we'll lean into the facts right now."
Finally, Pope emphasized that this game will provide his team with a learning opportunity. As games become even more significant as the regular season closes and the postseason ramps up, he said this could be a game that teaches his team how to win.
"This group is good enough to win," he said. "And we'll, we'll figure that part out. We're going to get there. We're, you know, we're at that point in the season where, you know, these late game situations, they're going to become increasingly heated. We have incredibly painful moments from this game, where we weren't present, and we will learn from that, and we're going to continue to get better.
"And listen, if we do this right, you know, these moments are the moments that we're going to get to replay again, and we're going to do them right and these guys are so emotionally invested, they're putting so much energy, they're there, they're so committed to each other that they'll figure this out. But it's about the guys that are on the court right now, and we have the guys to do this, and we're not spending any time thinking about anything else."