Mark Pope has players speak in unique 'Kentucky' language: 'People won't understand what we're even talking about'

Esoteric, arduous, duplicitous, infinitesimal and veracious are some of the words Mark Pope threw out there at press conferences during his debut season at Kentucky. That’s not even counting his conversations about the team operating their frontal cortex and not their limbic system or how he doesn’t have a Rorschach test to tell him which recruits are unselfish.

It shouldn’t come as a shock to you that the Wildcats talk in their own language on the basketball floor while being coached by a former Rhodes Scholar candidate and med school student at Columbia University.

It’s not medical jargon, though, and we can’t even generalize it as hoops jargon — every program has the latter, but not like the folks in Lexington. For Pope, it’s simply the language of Kentucky.

And starting point guard Jaland Lowe certainly hasn’t ever seen anything like it.

“I’ve never been a part of a system like this,” he said at SEC Tipoff ’26. “No, it’s crazy, the confidence he instills in us, the attention to detail. And every little thing that we do, even the way that we talk. Coach always tells us to tell people that we speak multiple languages, and one is Kentucky. 

“The way that we talk in our gym, a lot of people won’t understand what we’re even talking about when we’re out there.”

That was part of the draw for Lowe when exploring his options in the transfer portal. He knew his reputation for being a low-efficiency, high-turnover stat-stuffer at Pittsburgh. The counting stats were excellent and they helped him earn All-ACC honors as a sophomore, but to be a winning player and unlock the best version of his game, he had to clean some stuff up.

Pope made him aware of that from day one, but with a positive twist, stressing that while he was in the bottom 20 percent in college basketball in terms of shot quality, “he was in the 90th percentile in the country in taking tough shots.”

“I’ve heard that. Coach Pope actually mentioned that to me when I first met him,” Lowe said of his reputation at Pitt. “I wasn’t shocked to hear it. I know what kind of shots I had to take, and you know how it took a toll on everything. But it was a little weird to hear it out loud (laughs).”

He loved Pope’s honesty and how he saw him fitting into his system as a Wildcat, potentially turning a very good player in the ACC into a great player in the SEC.

And he’d be doing it at Kentucky, the biggest brand in the history of the sport. Not a bad pitch, eh?

“I chose Coach Pope because he told me straight up how it was, how Kentucky is, how big the opportunity is,” Lowe said. “The way that his offense is played, how it’d be a good fit in his system, how he’s helped other players before me. And the opportunity to win at the highest level.

“I feel like when you have a coach that instills confidence, wants to win, and wants nothing but the best for you, that’s a great position for yourself.”

Oh, and he’s doing it alongside other elite talent. The weight of the world is no longer on his shoulders to do it all individually; he’s got a top-ten team with stars all over the floor to work with.

Those tough, contested shots he had to take at Pitt are now wide-open looks because defenses have to guard everybody on this Kentucky squad. That’s allowing him to be the best version of himself and play stress-free.

“I mean, I feel like the game’s just a lot easier with the group of guys I have around me,” Lowe said. “They just make it a lot easier, a lot simpler. The way that we play our offense, it doesn’t require me to do too much. 

“And I’m gonna still be me at the end of the day, doing what got me here, and just trying to make the right plays.”

If the Wildcats are speaking their own Kentucky language, Lowe hopes to become the group’s master orator.