Pope: New faces, new plans, same expectations for Kentucky

Mark Pope’s second team at Kentucky does not bear many similarities to his first.

And that was largely by design.

While Pope’s first group of Wildcats gave fans a wealth of lasting memories and surprised some national observers by advancing to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, they were also thrown together on the fly after he was hired to replace John Calipari and an entire roster that bailed on UK.

Year 1 revealed that Kentucky needed a few personnel adjustments to improve its standing in a vastly improved Southeastern Conference.

“I do think — one of the things I think — is we’re way more mobile,” Pope said during his Q&A with a large group of local, state, and national reporters on hand for UK’s annual “Media Day” on Monday at Historic Memorial Coliseum. “I think we’re really, really mobile at all five positions. I think we have a ton of growing ball-handling, ball-moving capacity that I think is going to bode well for us.”

Flash back to Pope’s first season. Transfer Lamont Butler was a standout at point guard, but he had a freshman backing him up, and when injuries sidelined him, the Cats were in a bind.

The other guards were more suited as spot-up shooters on the wings or needed ball-handling development. Opponents found the blueprint for defending UK: chase the guards off the 3-point line, make them put the ball on the floor.

As the Cats got deeper into the season — and started seeing longer, athletic defenses in the SEC — the offensive productivity dropped a bit from its pre-January levels.

Pope says the added athleticism should also help the Cats in two other areas that needed improvement going into 2025-26: defense and rebounding.

“One of the things that leads to offensive rebounding opportunities is pace, space, and mobility in terms of continuous cutting hard, because it’s harder to block out moving targets, especially when they’re moving and shots are a little bit unpredictable,” he said.

Defensively, the Cats spent most of last season trying to improve their KenPom efficiency ranking. The hoops analyst points to data going back to the turn of the millennium that maintains a team must be in the Top 25 of the defensive efficiency rankings to have a shot at being national champion.

Kentucky spent a great deal of 2024-25 ranked near the 100 mark. A late push got the Cats to No. 51 when the season ended.

“We spent a ton of time evaluating last year,” Pope said of his staff. “There were some personnel changes that hurt us defensively… Part of it was personnel-driven; part of it was scheme-driven.”

Perhaps the biggest transfer portal additions were all made with a defense-first mentality: versatile guard Denzel Aberdeen from national champion Florida; aggressive and physical forward Mouhamed Dioubate from SEC power Alabama; and center Jayden Quaintance, one of the nation’s elite post defenders from Arizona State.

The next step was making defense a bigger priority in practice.

“Just kind of the urgency of it,” Pope said. “We’ve defined roles ont he staff, on the team, and tried to do a major overhaul. I think we were the 51st-raned defensive team in the country, and we would like to be Top 10.

“That’s a Yeoman’s task. We would like to be No. 1, but if we can slide int he Top 10 space, that’s going to serve us really well. That’s going to be an every second of every day pursuit.”

Pope even added that the Cats may utilize a staple from his playing days under UK head coach Rick Pitino: the full-court press.

“We have the personnel, and I think we have the depth, and I think we have the athleticism and the mobility and the determination and togetherness to find a way to be functional extending pressure, which is hard to do. It’s harder in college basketball than it’s ever been because guys are so skilled, but I think we can do it,” Pope said.

One thing that won’t change: Kentucky’s expectations.

“It’s always the same,” Pope said. “… What you don’t understand, if you are not here at Kentucky, is that this is all the pressure, always. If we had three players on this roster, the expectation would be we would still go win a national championship. That never changes here. It’s one of the things that sets Kentucky apart from everyone else.

“That’s why you come here, and it is not the right fit for everybody because you have to love the way that we love it to want to be here. That’s a pretty cool thing.”