And quit blaming Pope for their terrible play
Recruit better players
- Thread starter CAWOOD FAN
- Start date
You mean like a top 10 NBA draft pick and a top portal class combined with a preseason SEC POY? Yeah, let’s blame the players —- many of which had much greater success away from Pope than they are this year. Makes perfect sense. Also, I’m really disappointed with the players deciding to gameplan the way they did. Do you ever think the coach is responsible for their coaching?
its the players fault before its popes fault, honestly only losing by 10 with a bunch of role players isnt bad
So you mean to tell me that Dusty May can get Florida Atlantic to a Final Four and you think it’s too much to ask Pope to not get blown out with this roster? Get real
march is volatile, we saw st peters go pretty far, and they werent the better team in any game
sometimes thats how the cookie crumbles
Anyone want to tell the OP who is responsible for recruiting said better players? Lol
Every game is volatile, child. That doesn’t change facts. If plenty of coaches have done a lot more with less, the issue isn’t the quality of the roster. Frankly, I’m done arguing with you. You’re not even using reason.
i mean every game is volatile to an extent, but having better players takes that away, coaching is essential too of course
Both the coach and players are bad.
My brother, your vaunted SEC preseason POY just sucks. He's OK, maybe even good, but not great. It is what it is. No great players misses as many layups as he does.
I'm watching Arkansas vs UT RN. Acuff is what an SEC POY looks like. Not our boy.
The coach recruits the players dipstick.
Hire a better coach that can recruit better players.
Hire a better coach that can recruit better players.
And that same moron coach banked on Otega and freaking BG being difference makers on a good team. Brutal.
It’s too late. Seriously. I love Pope. I wanted him to succeed, desperately, but it’s too late to recruit for this season so time to pivot.
My issue right now is he is not focusing on winning at all costs. He is trying his best to let JL and JQ “warm up” and doesn't realize he no longer has that privilege. Every single game is now his *** on the line.
Every loss is a notch In him joining the list of Kentucky coaches that begins snd ends with Billy Clyde. He doesn’t have time to **** around, and I don’t think he realizes that. It’s a shame but that’s his choice. If he wants to try to get Chandler up to speed rather than win games then, well…he made his decision and I hope he is satisfied with it.
He can not keep starting guys who should be on the bench, not if he wants to have this job next season. He needs to decide what his priorities are, because right now I doubt a single fan is watching and feeling like winning basketball games is priority number 1 for him, and it MUST BE. For all his talk about understanding the mission, he doesn’t seem to realize that means doing everything it takes to win every single game. Not the game next week or next month — the game TODAY.
My issue right now is he is not focusing on winning at all costs. He is trying his best to let JL and JQ “warm up” and doesn't realize he no longer has that privilege. Every single game is now his *** on the line.
Every loss is a notch In him joining the list of Kentucky coaches that begins snd ends with Billy Clyde. He doesn’t have time to **** around, and I don’t think he realizes that. It’s a shame but that’s his choice. If he wants to try to get Chandler up to speed rather than win games then, well…he made his decision and I hope he is satisfied with it.
He can not keep starting guys who should be on the bench, not if he wants to have this job next season. He needs to decide what his priorities are, because right now I doubt a single fan is watching and feeling like winning basketball games is priority number 1 for him, and it MUST BE. For all his talk about understanding the mission, he doesn’t seem to realize that means doing everything it takes to win every single game. Not the game next week or next month — the game TODAY.
Mark Pope cant recruit. Its abundantly apparent!
There is no question that Pope is going to either have to land a superstar HS recruit or a very top tier portal transfer to keep the heat from going nuclear
Agreed. I think he’s just a freaking goofball that not many kids today can get on board with. I know some UK fans fawn over that video where he stripped down the his old uniform and did the Cats chant…but seriously…that’s some cringe level dorky crap. I’d be willing to bet the really good coaches in college basketball just sit back and laugh at the dude. And they should. He’s a joke.
I said this about Oweh even last year. He doesnt shoot layups, he throws it at the basket. If he doesnt dunk it there is a great chance that he will miss. He goes away from the basket instead of attacking it. As big and strong as he is, he should bully his way to the basket every time. If he gets any contact at all he will miss. Very frustrating watching him.
We really have one good ball handler and decent shooter, Lowe is it. Right now none of our forwards can really put the ball on the floor and drive to score when needed. We have some really good athletes that lack ball handling, passing and shooting abilities.We can’t guard teams that have players that can do those three things.
And the bad news is there are no more JV teams on the schedule that we can beat up following yet another pathetic loss.
He's definitely goofy.. Too femaleish!! He was def a dork when he was at UK in '96
This roster had two guys that had scored double figures per game in major college basketball on it before(and no stud freshmen).
Hope you’re sitting down for when I tell you who happened to score double figures for the Cats today…lol
Zel, Chandler, Johnson, Garrison group just isn’t good enough. We paid premiums for guys in that group that don’t offer premium value. A common thing among those guys is they’re more tweeners instead of specialists which further complicates things trying to figure out roles and partially explains this team’s lack of identity.
Oweh shouldn’t have been expected to be the star. He is a great third option. That is his place. It’s sad the staff spent superstar money on him. He’s a solid starter — not a star. It’s all he will ever be.
Garrison straight up shouldn’t be on the team unless he wanted to play for free. Period. No discussion or debate. He shouldn’t have been recruited to come back this season. He showed nothing last year to warrant it.
You’re missing my point. I can understand the offense. There’s two sides to basketball and you have to coach both. It’s not going to work with Pope — I don’t enjoy saying it but it’s the truth.
I guess I just have a hard time thinking Pope is “coaching” Chandler to go under and be slow closing out on countless 3s against a team that pretty much only shoots 3s lol.
Also just to vent, nothing drives me more nuts than everyone talking about how great an athlete he is. He jumps high. Outside of that there is absolutely nothing noteworthy about his athleticism!
While his coaching, to your point about the defense specifically, might be a reason it won’t work with him, I believe the players he recruits next offseason along with those he allows to return will be much more important to his fate as coach.
Putting aside optimism and hope. Just being real…have you seen anything to make you think Pope can coach a top 25 defense every year? If not, he needs to go already.
Well our KenPom defensive rating is better than our offense…so given what you’re saying he needs to not even make the flight back to Lex lol
Honestly, I don’t even care what the offense number is. I know the man is a great offensive coach. My biggest question when he got hired was “Can he coach defense?”. I assumed “yes”. I figured a guy as intelligent as he is would figure it out or hire the right guy on staff to handle that. I was proven false —- I just admit I was wrong and join the wild group of villagers and grab my pitchfork. The mob was right —- Pope is never going to be anything better than mediocre.
I’m just as doubtful about his offensive prowess. Haven’t seen him have success without having a big initiate the offense. I think coaches were behind in figuring out how to defend it. This year I have no clue what the offense is
I can explain the offense to anyone who cares. I have zero concerns there. Completely explainable. Defense —- not fixable.
The problem, op, with your line of thought is that Alabama does not have more talent than UK. It was a case of their talent playing at or near their best and Kentucky's talent, with the exception of Lowe and Oweh, playing at their worst. They out rebounded UK and made less turnovers. The announcers noted that UK was not playing as hard as Alabama and Pope acknowledged the same and it's been a consistent thing. Isn't it the coach's job to get his players to play hard and smart?
Against a team that wants to shoot threes as a first option are the players going rogue when they go under screens and leave elite shooters to help or was that the coaching plan?
Against a team that wants to shoot threes as a first option are the players going rogue when they go under screens and leave elite shooters to help or was that the coaching plan?
There’s no guarantee that higher ranked players will solve our problems. In fact, I’m not even sure if Pope is capable of managing the egos of elite prospects. And looking at this team, it appears that Pope and staff didn’t even consider if the players we got even fit our team. We look like Frankenstein’s Monster out there. Between the mismatch of players and CMP’s questionable ability to maintain the egos of out current team I wonder if “better recruits” is really the solution to this mess.
Did you not watch the game and witness his lineups?
Everybody of course wanted Pope to kill it here yet I don’t know a single person that wanted him hired. Most people in my circle were pissed. Pope has never won anywhere. This is Mitch’s fault along with Jeff Sheppard, Blevins and several others that pushed this on us.
So many people told me they hated the hire until
They watched the press conference and then they were pumped. I was like wtf. Did that PC give him superpowers or something?