I’ve been very critical of Pope. I’m not going to pretend that I was ever on page with the hire in the first place. Our early season woes certainly confirmed my fears about Pope. But last year we had a pretty good offense and poor defense while this year we have a pretty good defense and p*ss-poor offense. If we can manage to put two and two together, he’ll have potential.
Today was a good win, I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it was a great win. I hope that now that Lowe and JQ are playing we can see good season blossom from our early season woes. But we can’t ignore the elephant in the room: our recruiting woes. And as we’ve seen today with JQ being massive game changer, we-need-elite-players. Not a group of role players. Not middling mid-major guys. The elite. We don’t need a lot of them, but we need a couple to lead Pope’s teams if we want to get back where Kentucky belongs.
We need a smaller group of higher quality players, that’ll solve many of our frustrations with both too many role players and the incredibly frustrating rotation patterns.
If Pope can save this season, make it to the tournament, he obviously gets another year to turn things around. I think boosters will support that if he can show a turnaround. But if he can’t make the self-reflection necessary for his own personal and the staff’s problems to solve his greatest weakness, another year does nothing. I think he’s smart enough to realize that a smaller group of higher quality players is superior to amassing a large group of role players. I feel confident that he’ll make that necessary change in the offseason.
But I’m not even including the JMI hangups.
Pope has to put his foot down. I don’t care how he does it, but nothing will change with recruiting or the transfer portal without major changes to the JMI contract or how they present their terms potential players. We all know that that albatross is not going to go away. Surely Pope is well aware that he’ll be scapegoated if he cannot solve our recruiting woes. But he and his staff have to get changes in place. The fans can’t do it. He and and the boosters and the powers that be will be the ones to at the very least soften the blow of the JMI deal.
Today was a good win, I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it was a great win. I hope that now that Lowe and JQ are playing we can see good season blossom from our early season woes. But we can’t ignore the elephant in the room: our recruiting woes. And as we’ve seen today with JQ being massive game changer, we-need-elite-players. Not a group of role players. Not middling mid-major guys. The elite. We don’t need a lot of them, but we need a couple to lead Pope’s teams if we want to get back where Kentucky belongs.
We need a smaller group of higher quality players, that’ll solve many of our frustrations with both too many role players and the incredibly frustrating rotation patterns.
If Pope can save this season, make it to the tournament, he obviously gets another year to turn things around. I think boosters will support that if he can show a turnaround. But if he can’t make the self-reflection necessary for his own personal and the staff’s problems to solve his greatest weakness, another year does nothing. I think he’s smart enough to realize that a smaller group of higher quality players is superior to amassing a large group of role players. I feel confident that he’ll make that necessary change in the offseason.
But I’m not even including the JMI hangups.
Pope has to put his foot down. I don’t care how he does it, but nothing will change with recruiting or the transfer portal without major changes to the JMI contract or how they present their terms potential players. We all know that that albatross is not going to go away. Surely Pope is well aware that he’ll be scapegoated if he cannot solve our recruiting woes. But he and his staff have to get changes in place. The fans can’t do it. He and and the boosters and the powers that be will be the ones to at the very least soften the blow of the JMI deal.
