Mark Pope says foul issues threw them off their game plan in loss to Clemson

The one thing about Mark Pope is that he is a student of the game. He never wants to stop learning about how to be a better coach, how to manage his players better, ways to make the flow of a game more fluid, and any other basketball IQ thing he can increase. While Pope would rather learn in a way, losses often shine a spotlight on the things to learn, for weaknesses are exposed and magnified.

Clemson came in with a clear plan to attack Kentucky with grit and physical play. I would say that they picked that up from how Western Kentucky battled the Wildcats, but Clemson already has a physical brand of basketball. The Tigers took it up a notch to get Kentucky rattled and off the flow of the up-tempo, fast-break points that the Wildcats love so much.

This physicality resulted in fouls on both teams, but the ones that hurt Kentucky the most were when Lamont Butler picked up two early fouls in the first half, and so did Andrew Carr. The game pivoted towards Clemson as soon as that happened.

The point differential pointed out by David Sisk in the above tweet is startling. With Butler and Carr on the floor, Kentucky was a vastly different team than when they weren't. Yet, both of them had two fouls early in the second half, and Mark Pope sat them.

In his post-game press conference, Pope said, "Dealing with foul issues with Lamont was tricky in the first half, and dealing with injury with Lamont in the second half was tricky." He further said that he probably should have played Carr and Butler with two fouls and just trusted them. With that sort of point differential, those two were vastly important to find the win. These fouls threw the game plan off as they were working in rotations that weren't planned and giving extra minutes to guys not named Butler and Carr.