Mark Pope might have jury duty during Louisville week

Kentucky looked very good tonight, cruising by Valparaiso 107-59, the perfect tune-up for Tuesday’s showdown with Louisville. There’s just one potential problem: Mark Pope might have jury duty.

Pope broke the news during his postgame conversation with Tom Leach. Starting tomorrow afternoon, Pope has to call in to see if he’s assigned to a case. If so, will this put his status for Tuesday night at the Yum Center and the preceding preparations in jeopardy? Ever the responsible citizen, Pope is willing to fulfill his civic duty if called upon.

“Here’s the thing, guys. I’ve got an issue. So, I actually got a notice that I’ve got to go do jury duty. So, it’s really true. I apparently have to call in starting tomorrow every day at 4:30 p.m. to see if I get assigned to jury duty, which is semi-inconvenient, but I do love this Commonwealth and I love this state and I want to do my part, so we’ll see how this goes.”

Pope said he wants to go live on social media each day so fans can see whether or not he’s assigned jury duty or not. What a waiting game ahead of one of the biggest games of the year.

“I’m actually, what I think I’m going to do is I think I’m going to jump on Instagram live every day at 4:30 p.m. and invite anybody to see what happens. Am I showing up at the courthouse? It’s going to be awesome. And so, I actually don’t know what I’m hoping for here. We’ll see. It’s going to be a great week.”

Based on his questions for the crowd, it sounds like this will be Pope’s first time doing jury duty, if his name is called. His biggest concern? When he gets to eat.

“Has anyone served jury duty here? My most important question is, do they serve you lunch? Do they not serve lunch? Do you get a lunch break?”

I would imagine that Pope will be dismissed, but if not, he’s asking for volunteers to take his place so he can focus on getting the Cats ready for the Cards.

“Is there anybody who would be willing to substitute for me in jury duty? Alright, we’re all taking this journey together, guys.”

“It’s going to be an all-out war”

Unlike Kasean Pryor, Mark Pope did not give Louisville any bulletin board material ahead of Tuesday night’s game. He played it safe when asked about the Cards in his postgame press conference and on the radio. The furthest he went is saying that the game will be an “all-out war.”

“It’s awesome,” Pope told Leach of the Louisville game. “In-state games are great. Rivalry games are great. It’s going to be an all-out war.

“The nice thing for us is, that’s every single game for us. It’s Kentucky. Every single game is life or death, and we talk about it as a team, we talked about in our huddle at shootaround today, today was the biggest, toughest, most important game that we’ve played in this short season so far, and the same is going to be true when we go on the road to play Louisville and that’s every game. It’s the blessed part of playing at Kentucky, that every game is the biggest game.”

Yeah, yeah. Bring on the Cards.