Mark Pope was smiling as he talked about it, but there was zero doubt he understands the size of the challenge coming to Rupp Arena.
“I love this game,” he said of Kentucky–Indiana. “I have such great memories of playing in these games. I like it for us. I like it for fans. I like it for Indiana. I think it’s a great game.”
Why Indiana’s motion attack is Kentucky basketball's biggest defensive exam yet
“What they’re doing over there right now is actually awesome,” Pope said. “When you guys watch them play, you’re going to feel very much like Bob Knight Indiana in the sense of like they’re playing with unbelievable movement and motion and with high IQ.”
This is not a matchup built around one post bully or one ball-dominant guard. It is a system test. If you have watched Kentucky struggle at times with communication and rotations, especially in the Gonzaga loss, Pope’s description of Indiana’s offense will get your attention.
“They bring two players together in every different conceivable way,” he said.
He rattled off the different screening actions like a coach who has already watched a lot of film. Slips. Push screens. “Incredibly violent physical screens.” Guard-guard screens. Underneath actions that free a cutter just when you think the play is over. Three-man combinations that “trick it up.” Text actions into rescreens on live balls.
“They’re going to test everybody they play this year,” Pope said. “They’re going to really test their ability to communicate on the fly to make real physical, forceful decisions on the fly based on a set of principles. It’s a new challenge for us. We haven’t faced a team that attacks the game like this.”
Coming off a stretch where Kentucky has lost in different ways to elite competition, Gonzaga’s bigs pounded them inside, North Carolina controlled the glass, this is yet another identity check. Pope admitted they are still “learning ourselves,” later than he would like in the season, but that is simply where injuries and a strange first six weeks have left them.
The core of his message: Kentucky cannot afford to be late. Not with this much movement, not with this many screens and not against a team that shoots it and shares it at a high clip.
“It’s all the things,” he said when asked about adding a third defender into ball screens. “It’s awareness and positioning early in the possession. It’s trust in the idea, ‘Man, if I go leave myself so naked to go make a play on this ball, I might be supported by rotations behind me.’ It’s habits and default settings and all the things.”
Stylistically, this is exactly the kind of game Pope wanted when he talked about expanding the schedule and playing big, meaningful nonconference matchups. Emotionally, it is a rivalry that has not been played in Rupp in 15 years and carries its own weight.
But in the film room, it comes down to something simple. If Kentucky does not talk, if they do not fight through contact and if they do not trust the system, Indiana’s “Bob Knight”-style offense will carve them up.