Mark Pope: Louisville loss 'makes you want to vomit in your mouth,' but 'our job now is to rewrite the story'

How did Mark Pope feel after the Louisville loss? Well, he wanted to throw up and it gave him nightmares — so, about like you, probably. It’s a difficult dynamic for Kentucky now, letting that performance linger, knowing how poorly the Wildcats played to flat-out earn that loss while also having to move forward and focus on Eastern Illinois on Friday, followed by Michigan State in the Champions Classic just a few days later. They’ll be returning to the scene of the crime of arguably the worst loss of the season a year ago, stinking up Madison Square Garden in a blowout loss to Ohio State right before Christmas.

It’s a lot to take in and not a ton of time to process it all.

“There’s no doubt that the loss a couple of nights ago — any loss, I mean any loss for us is like the most devastating thing in the world,” Pope said Thursday. “That’s a real, true thing.”

This period is what will show what Kentucky is made of, though, responding to adversity by using it as fuel the Wildcats wouldn’t have had with a feel-good win at the KFC Yum! Center. The story would just move forward with no plot or character development.

Instead, this team got to experience heartbreak and devastation, now able to use that feeling as something to avoid the rest of the season in this rewrite. The only way to accomplish that is by sucking it up and moving on.

“When you have setbacks, the setback is either gonna be a setback forever or you’re gonna turn it into a pivotal moment in your growth,” Pope said. “Really, you get to write that story, and that never changes. It doesn’t change inside sports, it doesn’t change outside of sports. In your life, it’s exactly the same way as it is in sports.

“We have all these experiences — some can be devastating, some can be really tough, but they’re either gonna be devastating and tough for the rest of your life or you’re gonna make them into something that was like a pivotal life-changing moment. I believe in that.”

That’s why they give you 31 regular season games to work with, plus whatever happens in the postseason for SEC and NCAA Tournaments. It may feel like the worst thing that’s ever happened to this team as players and coaches, but guess what? Losing to Eastern Illinois would be even worse. Falling to the next name-brand program — right before the holidays in New York City again, at that — would be even worse.

Making statements in those games and beyond could prove this team is serious about understanding the assignment of hanging banner No. 9 this season. It can simply be a short-term setback for a long-term comeback if that’s how they choose to play this.

Sulking won’t allow that.

“We don’t have any time to feel sorry for ourselves and feel down and frustrated, anything else,” Pope said. “It is incredibly, massively painful. It’s haunting. It sits in your gut and makes you want to vomit in your mouth — all those totally natural reactions, but it’s our job to understand the gift we have in life and in sport to move on and rewrite the story.

“We always get to rewrite the story and that’s our job now, to rewrite the story where this pain actually turns into something positive. … It’s not the last time — it happens over and over and over again, and the people that can keep being re-writers, I think, end up having incredible success and joy and growth. The people that get stuck in rumination and maybe sometimes self-pity, I think it’s really hard. We’ve got no space for that here, for sure.”

As crazy as it sounds, Pope compares these moments to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. That’s how he processes losses and how he eventually responds — sooner rather than later, hopefully — as the season progresses.

You don’t get to the light at the end of the tunnel by doomscrolling on social media and obsessing over every little detail of the bad and ugly in postgame columns. You get there by finding it within yourself and growing internally.

“I keep telling myself, ‘Get to constructive, get to constructive.’ When you have a tough night like that, it’s really important that you spend more time looking for internal answers and validation rather than external. I think it’s really, really important — again, not just in sports, but in life also. I think they’re the same. When I say internal, I mean inside your own heart and your own faith base, for sure. I also mean within your own locker room, that everybody looks inward instead of continuing on this kind of mode of of taking in all the external information. …

“I suggested to my guys that they put down their phones for a couple of days. I don’t think that’s actually humanly possible for that younger generation, but the less burden they’re taking from external sources and the more they can stay focused on the reality that we create in our own locker room — because we’re actually the world’s experts at what we do, and sometimes you get tricked that you’re not. I think all of that’s really important 

“All with the goal of getting to constructive really fast. You go through the five stages of grief, it’s absolutely real in athletics. I know it sounds trite, but it’s absolutely real. You go through the five stages grief and you’ve got to get through them fast, because you just don’t have time. We try and rush them to get to constructive.”

Time to see if they can find closure on Friday night with Eastern Illinois in town.