Excuses, excuses, excuses....I read a few days ago we are so deep that 10 of our players could get 30 minutes a game @ 95% of the teams in the country.
Chicken Littles, Gloom and Doomers, Sky is Falling
- Thread starter Buckwheat Otay Is Dead
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Good question but we didn't have nobody that could guard him. I think Lowe will be ok, but I do have concerns with him guarding the ball.
Is this a valid criticism? Nearly every early deep shot Louisville attempted in the game came off of a simple dribble hand off or pick. We had two players in the action inside the three point arc on most of them. Why wouldn’t we have played tighter on the perimeter, especially knowing Louisville’s scoring comes primarily from the perimeter players? Does Pope not trust the players he added to this roster to defend with any pressure or does he tactically prefer to play a more drop coverage defense? That isn’t “dat coach don’t shoot dem 3s durr”. That’s a valid defensive concern based on Pope’s defensive tendencies. There are many, many criticisms that Pope earned with this game. It’s time for him to fix the issues, because much of the fanbase isn’t going to allow the excuses for poor play for very long. We lost more than a Kentucky coach should have last year, but it was largely out of his control. He has a big payroll and a pick of players than almost every other D1 coach would be jealous to have and insane depth to boot. Ten or more losses won’t cut it this year—it’s time for him to show us he is as good as we believe he is. I trust Pope will.
It does matter because last year was 24-12, which is a much worse percentage than 16-12. So yeah it does matter reguardless of agenda.
There is no agenda. It’s just a current point in time from a huge sample size and it is not good.
Louisville has a good team, we have players out, and some guys didn’t play good. If we don’t have a good game against a good team odds are we are going to lose. Happens to every team in college basketball. When JQ can play and the rest of the guys get 100 percent healthy we are going to be really good.
It is not an opinion it is a stat. If we were 22-6 over the last 28 that stat would be great. However, he is 16-12. It is not a made up number.
He certainly seemed to be last night, but I’d say overall they’ve got very similar careers. Kelsey won a bunch of conference titles at Winthrop and Charleston. Pope has never done that. Pope has won a couple NCAAT games. Kelsey never has. Hard to imagine there’s a solid logical argument one way or the other.
But you picked half a year to make it look bad. Redo it with the whole year. You have an agenda with Pope. You can’t cherry pick half a year then cry like a B about that said performance.
Ok! You are right. Pope is amazing. He has won 66 percent of his UK games in his career but also is on a 16-12 stretch. He has had abominable performances against OSU, Georgia, Ole Miss, Vandy, Arkansas, Bama, Auburn, Bama, Tennessee and now UL.
Sorry you don’t like the numbers. They are real and he owns them.
It really does, everyone already knows how the season will end after a loss.
That’s the main issue, even run zone half the time. His man isn’t cutting it. Just mix it up.
There is a pattern emerging. We go down big then decide to FIGHT! Then the narrative is “they didn’t quit”, “their fighters”. I’ve noticed something about fighters. Usually they aren’t winning. Look that was an awful game for us. We haven’t been to a final four in over a decade. Patience has worn out and Kentucky fans know day 1 if they have a title contender or not. Even the 98 team we knew we had the pieces and earned a 2 seed. I would feel a lot better if the game was back and forth and we lost in the end. The reality is Louisville dominated us and the nation saw a UK team that looked ill prepared on several levels. Lowe and Oweh but especially Lowe wanted to raise his draft stock last night. On top of everything any loss to UL hurts far more than the delight of winning 5 in a row against them. It’s a game I’d like to drop tbh.
A disappointing loss of course you are gonna hear from disappointed fans. I don’t really have a lot to say anymore after a loss, I just try to keep from saying much. I was banned for life for calling somebody what Cal called Terrence Jones and I’m pretty sure it was a mod. Once the site started over I logged in and let me back in. Please don’t ban me again. Love and peace! Lol
You think Hurley won a title his first year at a major university? You're just going to compare Pope, who is just starting in year 2 at UK, to Hurley starting in 2023?
It took Hurley 6 years to get Rhode Island to the NCAAT and it took him 3 years to get UConn to the tournament.
Pope started with zero players and coaches last year and playing in the toughest conference of all time, got a 3 seed and made it to the SS.
In what world is Pope nowhere close to Dan Hurley?
I mean, if you're going to do this, why don't you just compare him to 1973 John Wooden?
You guys are unreal, we lost 1 game and it was a road game in a hostile environment against a top 10 team.
Get a grip.
He was replying to another poster that made the comparison, using Hurley/UCONNs results from last season.
Right, but his post claimed that MP wasn't close to heing on the same tier as DH.
I would argue MP is well ahead of DH's pace. He just needs to win b2b titles in like 8 years.
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I'm just incredibly pissed at ESPN for screwing us with the timing of that game. No excuses we just got beat, but man, that's a difficult spot to be put into. Playing the basketball game before the football game? They don't do that **** to the UNC/Duke game
Whah…..he didn’t do better last year when he had a full 3 weeks to recruit. He only managed a sweet sixteen and 24-12 whah.
You know the part about winning b2b titles was a tiny bit of sarcasm, right?
Agree with everything you posted. Only thing I’ll add - the question on Pope, the only real question mark, was could he recruit at the level necessary at Kentucky. We are going to have to see. So far, still in doubt.
I think his defense is also a question mark which is weird since Pitino is his mentor.
The thing is about recruiting, it’s not at the top of the priority list imo, for a coaching quality, the way it was. You can’t flat out suck, but recruits are going to the highest bigger not the best recruiter. After the money the program and brand itself probably matters more then how a coach woo’s you. That’s the only reason I agreed with the Pope hire. He checks all the boxes except recruiting, but the NIL and brand recruits now. He’s got an exciting style of offense, kids will want it. Other than that I don’t see what charisma and recruiting talent for a coaching means now.
If it is still wildly important and Pope doesn’t have it, then he won’t make it. But I just don’t think it does. He’s already taken final 4 Nate Oats and national champion Golden’s players off their rosters. I don’t believe it’s got anything to do with it. I think if he did anything wrong it’s spacing the money too far out and not handing a few stud players majority. But we’ll see if n the end. This team isn’t going anywhere people are just reading too much into a road game early and barely out of October. When I see Pope isn’t the guy, I certainly will run him out myself. That’s never been a problem of mine.
I agree with all that, but he has to prove he can coach a defense
Last year we didn’t have time to put anything together except try and offense everyone out of the gym. He adjusted to that this season, but we don’t have a sample size. So maybe he has issues there but maybe not. Not sure we’ve got enough to go by.
last season he just quickly ran out and grabbed what he could and they even did decent defensively given the limitations. This season we have nothing to go on, we haven’t played much at all.
I really believe we are jumping the gun in many aspects but it’s a loss to UL so, it’s expected. I’m sure Mark gets it 100%
I predicted a loss to Louisville. I’m not mad that we lost the game, personally. I want to win every game but I don’t live in fantasy land. The part that bothers me is how bad the gameplan was. It really was shocking how PK outcoached Pope. I’m also not so obtuse as to think that means anything on the macro. Pope knows the assignment and he’s a hell of a coach so I expect he will adjust. I do believe he has dawg in him too.
I’ve always been one that thinks the out coached charge is largely overplayed. Lowivillle played lights out for around 30 minutes. Absolutely lights out. And they almost lost at home, 1 shot from blowing a 20 point lead to a team that was playing about as bad as you can.
Louisville wanted the game really bad and hit a lot of shots they probably won’t again. He wasn’t shooting for the team. To me he didn’t coach all that great, as evidenced by nearly blowing the game when his team should have been safely ahead. We’re reading too much into this particular game.
I’m gonna get flak for this but trust me when I say I rewatched the game 2.5 times already. I’m sick in the head. Louisville didn’t play out of their minds. They missed a lot of open shots that they won’t be missing in February. I’ve never came on this site and said Pope got outcoached other than this game, because I’m the kind of guy who says what he means and means what he says. Go rewatch the tape, brother. It was a blooodbath. Probably eating Pope alive and I’ll bet we are better for it soon
If Cal was still the UK coach I don't think you would be defending our terrible play. Even Pope admitted 3 guys weren't focused.
I wasn’t thrilled with how long it took Pope to figure **** out. He did, by the way. Just took way too long.
I don’t mean they played out of their minds the entire game. But for the first 25 minutes, they played as good as I can remember a losuuvlle team playing. Now I definitely won’t go back and watch it, props to you for doing that. I’d take that kind of sht easy though, we can’t change it and all it will do is fester into a bleeding ulcer or something. Can’t be good health wise, but there for a while they hit like 5/6 for three, and we weren’t even rebounding well for stretches. They were killing us in assist, and again, a guy like Pitino with that kind of lead would have never allowed UK back in that game. We weren’t playing well enough. Now that’s just from memory in time.
The point is, and I have to make myself remember this, Pope is tinkering with his system. He adapted for the SEC and Pope himself has never had a team so defensively oriented. He’s learning on the job in a way. Could he have made a mistake by doing it to this degree? It’s possible. But we are reading way, way too much into an early November game in the road to a hostile environment with several key players banged up and again, JQ is not even playing. I just think to suggest it’s the end all, and many are, is not what we should be doing. But it’s Louisville and I get it. Some people here have to deal with that little fanbase and I’m sure it’s ridiculous to deal with the compex. We can’t win all of the games against them.
18-40.
I don’t disagree with anything you said. I think sometimes people are just lumping everyone who said something bad about the game into a single category. I am not one of the people with long term concerns. I think Pope WILL get the defense figured out, and I expect if he doesn’t, he is smart enough to find a new D coordinator. I don’t have a problem with a thing you’ve said.