Dan Issel rips Kentucky post-MSU: 'Not one aspect... (suggests) they're going to be a decent team'

It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week-plus for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats, taking a pair of uncomfortable losses at Louisville and in New York City against Michigan State. They weren’t particularly competitive in either, and now, the next opportunity to prove themselves against name-brand competition isn’t until December 2 when the North Carolina Tar Heels come to town.

That makes for an uneasy Thanksgiving season and opens the door for folks outside the program to pile on in the meantime. That includes national media members and former coaches — Bruce Pearl said, “They’ve got too many pieces,” while adding, “they have spent starter money on backups. We’ve already seen Jamal Mashburn say this team looks “like kittens more than Wildcats” right now, and the list goes on.

Add Kentucky’s all-time leading scorer to that list, arguably the greatest player to ever wear the uniform. He’s not pleased with this current product, either, Dan Issel joining ESPN680’s Rabaut & Co. to share his frustrations after letting the dust settle on the loss at Madison Square Garden.

“I thought — Louisville’s got a really good team, and playing them at their place, I really didn’t expect them to win,” Issel said. “I certainly expected them to win against Michigan State up in New York. That was a complete disaster.”

What went wrong for the Wildcats, as the former NBA and ABA All-Star, who scored 2,138 points with 1,078 rebounds in Lexington, sees it?

“If I had one word to describe the Kentucky team, I would say ‘selfish,'” Issel continued. “You just go right down the line. The point guard, (Jeremy) Fears, for Michigan State, had as many assists as the entire Kentucky team. Start there. The shot selection was atrocious. When the game starts slipping away, you have to move the basketball, you’ve got to move yourself, you’ve got to set some picks, get some easy baskets, get to the free throw line. Kentucky did none of that.

“Here’s the frustrating part to me — because you know I’m not a big 3-point fan to start with — this idea of, ‘We’ve got to take 35 3-pointers a game.’ How about the goal be, ‘We want to make 10-12 3-pointers’? … On the defensive end, no effort. Terribly outrebounded on the boards, they weren’t helping each other defensively.”

And the list goes on and on.

Then came his big bomb, the one that’s currently going viral — as you’d expect, coming from the guy who averaged 33.9 points per game as a senior at Kentucky.

Where does his confidence come from that this group can turn it around? Well, he isn’t, at least from what he saw in the Big Apple.

“I was talking to (Louie) Dampier yesterday. I told him that it looked like to me, that Mark went down to the New York Athletic Club a half-hour before tip-off, got 10 guys who had never played together before, and put Kentucky uniforms on them,” he said. “There was not one aspect of that — not one — game that would lead me to believe they’re going to be a decent team this year.”

ISSEL CRUSHES KENTUCKY | Kentucky Legend and Hall of Famer @DanIssel44 rejoined Rabaut & Co. with @RadioLouie @YaBoyZC where he discussed his takeaways of the loss for Kentucky basketball at the hands of Michigan State and Tom Izzo.

Listen to Rabaut & Co. Monday through Friday… pic.twitter.com/19T7QZejhn

— ESPN Louisville (@ESPN680) November 21, 2025

That’s not to say they can’t do it, because Issel actually believes that a lot of their issues are correctable. But they have to show a whole heck of a lot more than what he’s seen to start the year to make him confident that it will actually happen.

“I think Mark (Pope) said it best: ‘I’m not connecting with them,'” Issel said. “… This team is capable of playing good defense, but you’ve got to give a lot more effort than they gave in that Michigan State game. And they better get their act together, because the schedule this year is brutal. … All of this is fixable, but you’ve got to start — you know the old cliche, ‘You play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back.’ It’s a cliche because it’s true. These kids have to start playing together as a team and not worry about stuffing the stat sheet.”

Issel went on to say he still believes Pope is the man for the job and added, “I’m not one to criticize selfishness — the only time I passed was when the ball slipped out of my hands,” so it’s certainly not the end of the world.

But you’d rather have the Horse on your side rallying the troops than picking up a pitchfork himself.

Hear it all for yourself below: