Mark Pope hints at questionable pregame experience at Louisville's KFC Yum! Center

In its first road game of the season, No. 9 Kentucky fell at rival No. 12 Louisville 96-88 Tuesday night. The loss marked the ‘Cats first to the rival Cardinals since Dec. 2020.

Kentucky took an early three-point lead with 11:35 remaining in the first half, but then surrendered a 27-6 to Louisville over the next seven minutes. It finished the half strong and trailed by just seven at the break, but the Cardinals extended their lead back to 20 in the second half. The ‘Cats once again battled back and cut the deficit to four with four minutes remaining, but Louisville was able to hold on for the eight-point victory.

When discussing the loss during Thursday’s media opportunity, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope raised some eyebrows with a quote about the game. In it, he detailed an ‘out of character’ pregame experience for his team prior to tip-off.

“I’m not ready to tell the story yet, but at some point, we will talk in detail about our pregame experience at Louisville,” Pope said. “It was out of character for us. That’s young and new. I don’t want to keep our emotions in check, I want to keep them focused. I want to keep them intentional. I want our guys to have ALL of the emotion. What’s the point if you can’t have all the emotion? But I don’t want our guys to be run by our emotion. I want our guys to focus their emotion, and I know that sounds 30,000 foot level stuff, but I’m being very specific on that.”

“That’s one of the things, with being an athlete and especially being an athlete at Kentucky, is the ability to kind of not dumb down your emotion and bridle your emotion even. Just channel it and have it laser focused so it’s intentional emotion so you’re controlling your emotion. Your emotion is not controlling you. That’s a big deal, it’s a part of the learning process and it’s something that we’ll continue to work on this year.”

Kentucky can’t linger on Louisville loss with tough schedule ahead

Prior to tip-off, the Louisville fans were certainly heckling Kentucky players as they left the court, but there was no evidence to suggest that a situation arose in that aspect. This would mean something occurred behind closed doors, which Pope will eventually go into detail about, per his own words.

Kentucky cannot linger on the loss for long, as it is back in action Friday night at Rupp Arena against Eastern Illinois in the BBN United Finals. It then travels to Madison Square Garden for a Champion’s Classic matchup against No. 17 Michigan State on Tuesday night, riding a one-game winning streak in the event.

Following that, the ‘Cats have multiple chances to boost their non-conference resume with marquee games against No. 18 North Carolina, No. 19 Gonzaga, Indiana, and No. 13 St. John’s on the schedule before SEC play opens on Jan. 3 against No. 8 Alabama.