Pope sees silver lining in ugly Monday practice

Positive energy and optimism are two of the traits that Mark Pope will probably exhibit for as long as he’s in coaching, but that doesn’t mean he’s afraid to mention the bad.

You can just expect him to quickly pivot from the bad to a positive takeaway.

Pope was not thrilled with how half of Kentucky’s team practiced on Monday. The team was split into two groups, and the first group “struggled”, Pope told reporters on Monday.

“It derailed the whole practice because one of our key ideas this year, one of our 100-percents, is living to a standard every single possession. So we are going to blow up practice more often than we did last year. We’ll get stuck because we’re not going to move on until we live up to the standard we have.”

So practice was derailed and struggles were rampant. But Pope still found a silver lining.

“Two things happened that were good,” Pope said. “One, our guys didn’t quit. The gym was full of frustration. It was not a happy place this morning for the first group but the guys didn’t quit. They kept trying to work through it until they got there. They kept trying to listen and understand and grasp what we were trying to accomplish.

“The second nice thing that happened … was the second group witnessed the last 15 minutes of misery of the first group so they came onto the court with a whole different renewed determination to do it right on the first rep. So I think this team has the flavor and juice to be really coachable. I think we have a conglomeration of guys who understand what Kentucky is, who understand our desperate desire to get better and have the humility to do it. Humility is a sliding scale but I think we’re living in a humble space right now where guys are able to take in new information and get better.”