Mark Pope 'not yet' proud of this Kentucky team

Throughout the summer, fans heard about the competitive practices Kentucky had between its new, expensive roster. However, Big Blue Nation has been calling out the lack of effort they’ve seen out of their Wildcats so far this season.

Mark Pope agreed that his team’s competitiveness has been less than ideal. Beating NC Central 103-67 on Tuesday, the second-year Kentucky coach believes great things are in store for this year’s UK team.

“It hasn’t translated yet, but it will,” Pope said. “‘Yet’ is the most powerful word, (it) is the best word in the English language. It’s 3 letters that are super powerful and it hasn’t translated yet, but it will. It will.

“We will be so proud of this team, We’re not yet, but we will be.”

Kentucky’s success this season has been solely against low-level mid-major competition. In the four games that the Wildcats have played against ranked opponents this season, they’re 0-4 and losing by an average of 15.8 points in those matchups. However, that number is skewed by the Wildcats’ 94-59 loss to Gonzaga last week.

During the loss to the Bulldogs, many fans took to social media to criticize the efforts from Kentucky on 50-50 balls, offensive rebound attempts, getting back on the break, etc. Even during UK’s blowout win over NC Central, Pope called out his teams defensive effort at halftime despite leading by 21 points at the time.

“That competitive spirit, man, I’ve done a poor job of getting that out of our guys in games, which is monumentally frustrating for me.  But we will get it out and we are gonna find it or we are gonna die trying,” Pope continued. “And so it’s there. 

“We’ve just got to get it and find a way to do it.  We’ve got to get guys outside of themselves and we’ve got to get guys living and dying for this team and in this gym, with this fan base in these games and in competitive games, when things go bad, we have to be able to tap into that. So far, I’ve done a poor job of listening to that from our guys and nobody is more surprised about that than I am.  That’s not going to stand.”

Kentucky’s next two matchups will be as emotionally-charged as any left on its schedule. They’ll host bitter rival Indiana on Saturday night before traveling to Atlanta the next weekend to play Rick Pitino and St. John’s on Dec. 20. Those games are must-win for the Wildcats, who face the real possibility of having no non-conference Quad 1 wins on their schedule this season.