'It's been rough': Mark Pope talks about Kentucky's 'major overhaul' after Gonzaga loss

Friday night’s loss to Gonzaga was the low point of the Mark Pope era thus far, made clear by the boos that rang out in Bridgestone Arena from the first TV timeout on. How does Kentucky even start to get back on track? On his radio show last night, Pope said the staff and media are in the process of a “major overhaul,” and it hasn’t been pretty.

“Well, it’s been rough,” Pope said. “It’s a major overhaul, reconstruction. It’s been super emotional and really taxing, and at times, really ugly and violent and growing and crying and all the stuff. There’s a certain amount of gnashing of teeth that goes on when you’re not functioning well, the way that we should. So it’s been really challenging, exactly as it should be, and it’s a fight.”

Kentucky’s lack of team chemistry is glaring right now. We’ll likely never know what’s behind it, but Pope still believes this group can get on the same page and “accomplish great things.” That doesn’t happen overnight. BBN United members got a firsthand look at Monday’s practice, which Pope described as “salty.”

“We had a big group in to watch practice today, and it was pretty salty. Usually, when people come into practice, they feel all the joy and love that we want to espouse here at Kentucky. And right now, I think — that group, they were wonderful, they were unbelievable — but it was a salty, hard-fought, little bit of an angry practice, and it’s just what we need right now. It’s exactly what we need right now for us to grow out of this.”

The most offensive part of Kentucky’s performance in its four losses? The lack of effort. That’s why fans at Bridgestone Arena booed so loudly. Pope said on Friday night that he understands the boos, and as a former player, he’s also upset with the coach. After a few days, you can still tell how tortured he is by how things are unfolding.

“It’s distressing,” Pope said. “We performed poorly. We executed poorly. Our togetherness was poor. There was nothing good about it. And so everything that comes with that is supposed to come with it. And so that’s just the normal. The solution is to play great basketball, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

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Pope: “Clearly, my approach needs to change”

Pope talked at length about how he’s trying to connect with the different personalities on the team and the right way to get through to them when the going gets tough. A fan wrote in asking if Pope was being too positive, to which Pope laughed a bit, telling Leach that his players probably wouldn’t say that right now.

“Well, clearly my approach needs to change, you know? I think it’s probably multifaceted. I’m not sure my guys would say that I’m always positive. I think the guys would disagree highly with that. But what we want to be is always constructive, and always believing. We’re in a tough spot, and there’s no way around it. We’re in a really tough spot. We have not performed well. We haven’t developed this group well. We haven’t gotten to where we wanted to get, thus far, but we will get there.”

For what it’s worth, Pope believes it will happen.

“I’m actually really good at this, and we have the right guys to do this. We just, for a number of reasons, haven’t yet. It’s going to take everything. It’s going to take all the criticism and all the truth-telling and all the encouragement. It’s going to take everything.

“We haven’t got the right vibe yet. And we’ve attacked it from a bunch of different angles, but we’re learning, we’re growing, and we are determined to get better.”

The first step is tonight vs. NC Central at Rupp Arena (7 p.m. ET, SEC Network).