Mark Pope reveals stats which excite him from exhibition win vs. Minnesota State

Mark Pope liked a lot of what he saw as Kentucky closed their preseason on Tuesday.

Following the 98-67 win over Minnesota State, Pope elaborated on some of the stats that he loved in the second and final exhibition for the Wildcats. His main focus was their possession numbers, specifically with their assist-to-turnover ratio as it was 3.5 to 1 as six of their eight players recorded an assist, if not multiple, without turning it over once.

“Yeah, so, you know, this is a possessions game and it’s very important to us that we have more possessions,” Pope explained. “So, you think about our guys? So, Otega Oweh, like, just a – he’s never done this before I’m pretty sure. He was a 6-0 tonight. That’s incredible, right. Kerr Kriisa, first time under the lights, was a 6-0 tonight. Lamont Butler, you know, came off a night and was a 5-1 tonight. Those numbers are great. Andrew Carr was a 3-0, which is absolutely terrific. We’re excited about it. Collin Chandler was elite-level playing off of two feet at a 3-0. You know, he was unbelievable getting downhill, playing off two feet.”

“In a game that felt weird? There wasn’t a real rhythm in this game so there was a lot of weirdness. For us to be, you know, 28-8 in this game, under 10 turnovers, is super exciting to me and nearing 30 assists is really important for us,” continued Pope. “I’m really ecstatic about those numbers.”

On the other side of the ball, Pope also liked how the Wildcats’ defense held the Mavericks to 39.1% shooting overall. That’s not to mention forcing four more turnovers than they had assists on the night.

“We held them to 39% from the field. Although we tried to give them 40% in the second half. We held them to 39% and that’s our goal,” added Pope. “We want to keep teams at 39% from the field so we did that effectively. I’m really proud of that.”

In two exhibitions against Kentucky Wesleyan and Minnesota State, Kentucky won by an average of 51 as they averaged 110.5 points and held the two opponents to 59.5. To look at those two statistics again, UK posted 60 assists to 13 turnovers for a ratio of 4.6 per. The opposition also shot a combined percentage of 36.1% in the losses.

Kentucky was firing through two exhibitions. Now, next week tips off the real season with them looking have a similar outing in their opener against Wright State.

“There was a lot of really good stuff tonight,” said Pope.