Kentucky basketball’s 6-4 start and losses to every major college team it has faced has taken coach Mark Pope back to a style that he thought he had left behind. It’s going to take an old-school approach to get the Wildcats playing how they need to play.
In Pope’s first few seasons as a head coach at Utah Valley, he coached with a harder edge. He was not as consoling on turnovers, not as encouraging after mistakes in execution.
He admitted as much during a news conference last December.
“I was about, ‘How long can you sustain a level-10 intensity and focus?’” Pope said. “I would spend 24 hours a day pacing and criticizing and yelling, being in game mode. Full-on intensity.”
He thought that was the way he was supposed to be. And it shouldn’t take long to figure out why, having played for Rick Pitino in the 1990s, when success was a choice and anyone playing for him knew not to think they could choose mediocrity.
This season has dictated that Pope return to that style, not what he learned from a group of BYU faculty in clinical psychology.
Pope molded his approach to focus more on the “connective tissue” of the team, which at BYU and his first season at UK didn’t include the heavy criticism and intense, laser-focus of all things basketball. There's room for a cerebral approach, too; Pope doesn't have to transform into Bobby Knight.
But that has to be earned with a group of players who can handle such trust.
This version of the Wildcats needs to be coached into what intensity looks like. They need to learn how effort can sometimes make up for when the execution might be off and shots may not be falling.
That may seem simple, but from UK’s four losses it looks like the players don’t understand.
"I've done a poor job eliciting that from our guys," Pope said after Tuesday's 103-67 win over N.C. Central. "Nobody's more surprised about that than I am, but that's not going to stand."
Junior Brandon Garrison has been the most obvious example of how Pope is changing.
After the Cats’ loss to Michigan State, Garrison was benched in favor of freshman Malachi Moreno in the starting lineup. Pope said he wasn’t in the business of sending messages, but the way Garrison played in his limited minutes against Loyola Maryland seemed like he understood why.
Until Tuesday night’s game against the Eagles. Garrison was at the wrong end of another Pope non-message, message when he didn’t play the entire second half after committing a turnover then jogging down the floor as it led to a dunk.
That happened as Pope also held Kam Williams and Jaland Lowe out of the lineup for the entire first half.
The roster construction of this team has contributed to the Cats' slow start; they're just not as experienced. Last season, Pope could afford to allow his players more freedom on the floor because he was primarily using veterans.
Lamont Butler, Koby Brea, Jaxson Robinson, Andrew Carr and Amari Williams were not only seniors but also were playing in their fifth years thanks to being the last class that could take advantage of playing under the COVID-year eligibility waiver.
Otega Oweh, as a junior last season, was the young fella in the starting lineup. Now, he and Florida transfer Denzel Aberdeen are the old heads, and they’re surrounded in the lineup with players who are either young like Moreno or Jasper Johnson or simply don’t know what it’s like to play at this level.
They’re getting a tutorial on playing on a stage like Kentucky’s, where the spotlight shines the brightest or burns the harshest depending on how they’re playing.
"We’ve got to get guys outside of themselves, and we got to get guys living and dying for this team, in this gym with this fan base," Pope said after Tuesday night's win.
The smile has come off Pope's face; he's wearing more of a scowl these days. The cerebral X's and O's guru has turned drill sergeant. It's just the change that UK needs to salvage a season headed in the wrong direction.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at [email protected], follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky basketball needs Mark Pope to be more Rick Pitino right now