2 Football Analogies for Kentucky Basketball's Early Season Struggles

For the second straight week, Mark Pope‘s Kentucky basketball team played in a high-profile matchup and fell flat on its face. It’s hard to know how to feel about where this team stands, particularly after they ran preseason No. 1 Purdue off the court in an exhibition less than a month ago, so I’ll fall back on a few football analogies to provide some morning-after clarity.

If You Have Two Quarterbacks, You Have None

Steve Spurrier is the exception to the rule, but even he was at his best when he had a go-to guy. There’s a reason it’s a cliche. Rotating quarterbacks rarely works. The best teams have players with clearly defined roles.

Depth was supposed to be the strength of Mark Pope’s second team. Instead, he’s got a two-quarterback situation on his hands.

Pope’s coach, Rick Pitino, is similar to Spurrier. He’s one of the few exceptions to the college basketball norm. Rather than a starting five with 2-3 role players rotating off the bench, Pitino went deep into his bag, using depth to attack opponents in waves with suffocating defense.

It’s early in the season, and the injury situation isn’t helping, but Mark Pope’s team does not have a regular rotation with players who have clearly defined roles. The dozens of combinations create miscommunication. It’s a mess. This team lacks the identity Pope instilled in year one that propelled that group to set the college basketball record for victories over Top 15 teams in a single season.

When Kentucky Misses the Mark

This offseason, Pope had a different roster-building approach. He sought out players who could add more physicality and athleticism to withstand the rigors of SEC play. In the head coach’s mind, that was the key to raising the ceiling of his Kentucky basketball team.

It wasn’t that long ago that Mark Stoops was in a similar situation. Kentucky played a physical brand of football, suffocating opponents on defense and running over them on the other side of the line of scrimmage. However, they hit a hard ceiling because of the program’s inefficient passing attack.

Mark Stoops invested in athletes at wide receiver. It worked with Wan’Dale Robinson? Surely, that trajectory could continue with more exceptional pass-catchers? Instead, the plan back-fired.

While trying to raise the ceiling of the Kentucky football program, the floor crumbled. They lost what made them successful. Kentucky’s identity evaporated.

Is Mark Pope in the middle of a Kentucky basketball identity crisis? The similarities between the two programs are striking, and that long pause in his Tuesday night response says more than any words could.

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