Mark Pope sends a message to Kentucky fans amid Wildcats' struggles

Kentucky‘s season completely went off the rails Wednesday night as it suffered its first ever home loss to Missouri 73-68 in Lexington. Mark Pope‘s extremely expensive roster, which opened the season ranked No. 9 in the Preseason AP Poll, is officially in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for just the fourth time since 1992.

The Wildcats took a 66-58 lead with 4:37 remaining in the game following a Brandon Garrison alley-oop dunk and an Otega Oweh three-point make, which forced Dennis Gates to take a timeout. Following that timeout, the Tigers outscored Kentucky 15-2 to steal the win inside Rupp Arena. Missouri improved to 2-0 in SEC play for the first time in program history, while Kentucky fell to 0-2 in SEC play for the first time since the 2005-06 season.

Postgame, Pope sent a message to Kentucky fans amid the teams’ struggles. Almost midway through the season, the Wildcats are 2-5 against Q1 opponents, 0-1 against Q3 opponents, and 7-0 against Q4 opponents.

Mark Pope says Kentucky fans ‘have the right to do whatever they want’

“It’s a hard space,” Pope said. “This is tough. This is not the way we intended to start SEC (play), and that’s exactly what we have in our hands right now. When you go through hard times, which everybody does, the question is ‘how much does it take to break you?’ I’m not about to break. This group’s not about to break. We’re no place there. The only thing you can do is grieve as quickly as possible and move onto the next incredibly challenging game, which we have on Saturday (Mississippi State). The effort and trying to get better, and these guys will.”

“BBN has the right to do and say and act however they want. They’re the greatest fans in the world, and I’m sure they’re incredibly, incredibly frustrated and upset. They have the right to do whatever they want. In terms of this team, we don’t have this opportunity. Our job is to suffer all night long, figure out how to do this better, get a little bit tougher, dig in a bit harder, execute more well, and move on and win games.”

Things must improve quickly for Kentucky, as it currently sits at a No. 9 seed in On3’s latest Bracketology. Sitting at 9-6, the Wildcats still have ranked matchups against No. 11 Vanderbilt (x2), No. 15 Arkansas, No. 18 Georgia, and No. 21 Tennessee (x2) remaining on their schedule.

Kentucky will look to earn its first SEC win of the season on Saturday against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs have not downed the ‘Cats inside Rupp Arena since Feb. 3, 2009.