WATCH: Mark Pope's press conference after Kentucky's win over Purdue

When Mark Pope came out for his postgame press conference, it was to a round of applause. Shoutout to Pope for clarifying for the cameras that it wasn’t from the media in attendance, but the several fans (boosters) who crowded into the room to hear Pope speak after Kentucky’s 78-65 win over No. 1 Purdue.

“All of the partisans out there just know that was not the media. That was just — but media, if you guys want to clap too, you can. That’s fine.”

We almost did, and could you blame us? Kentucky looked incredible in its first exhibition, leading Purdue by eight at halftime, 17 with three minutes to go, and 13 when the buzzer finally sounded. Pope being Pope, he started his press conference by referencing a church sermon, which he used as an analogy for Kentucky’s upside — if they play for each other.

“The speaker said, ‘If you know, you know.’ And he was talking about, of course, the gospel of Jesus Christ, but this idea of, ‘If you know you know,’ is something that we kind of talk about with our team a little bit too.

“We have a long way to go. We have so much work to do, but in terms of one night, for these guys to actually be in this for each other, that’s going to be the key to this team. As much as we can just stay in this for each other, we have a chance to be a good team, and so I’m super proud of them.”

Pope talked plenty about Jasper Johnson and Malachi Moreno’s debuts as Kentucky Wildcats. The homestate kids made the Bluegrass proud tonight, combining for 23 points — on Moreno’s birthday, nonetheless. Jasper was Kentucky’s leading scorer, but it was actually Collin Chandler, who only scored two points, that earned MVP honors from Pope due to his team-high +15 in plus/minus efficiency. Mo Dioubate got a shoutout too, with Pope predicting he’ll be a resounding fan favorite before long.

Pope gave plenty of credit to Purdue and Matt Painter, and noted that the Boilermakers didn’t shoot that well tonight, but he also said his team was sloppy at times too, especially in the second half. Imagine when they put it all together. No wonder he dropped a comparison on the 1996 national championship squad.

Hit play below to hear it all.

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Transcript

MARK POPE:  Just know that was not in the media, yeah.  But I like media if you want to, that’s fine.  I was listening to a church sermon that was super-powerful and the speaker said, if you know, you know. He was talking about, of course, the gospel of Jesus Christ. This idea of you know, you know, which we talk about our team a little bit too. We have a long way to go, you know, we have so much work to do.  In terms of one night for these guys to actually be in this for each other is going to be the key to this team. As much as we can to stay in this for each other, we have a chance to be a good team and so I’m super proud of them. Fire away with questions.  

Q I will ask you as tactfully as I can. I saw Malachi a few years ago in the state final four.  Several of us in here did. The impression was, wow, he’s soft, he’s big but he’s soft. When you see what you see tonight. What happened?  

MARK POPE: I’m really proud of him and I got to know his family really well. His mom is incredible and his brother Michael, oriented his whole life to take care of his brother and Malachi himself has just made great changes. I talked about this this summer when I was at USA and saw him compete, I was blown away also, because I saw the same as you, I wouldn’t say soft but he was kind of a one position guy and was not rebounding out of his position and was not rim protecting out of his position. He’s just made incredible progress and that’s a real tribute to his family and himself and he’s got a chance to grow into a really special player. He’s got a lot of work to do and got so much growth ahead of him but he’s got a chance to have massive impact on this game.  

Q Coach, you mentioned all preseason how important these exhibition games are even though don’t count towards anything. What’s something you learned about your team that can help use to help carry you through the rest of the tough preconference schedule?  

MARK POPE: I was really proud of us in the first half offensively.  We weren’t very good but when we weren’t very good we tried to solve it by being us.  You know, we had seven cut assists and seven screen assists on the night.  There were several stimy late possessions in the first half where we didn’t just try to, like go fix it the way that these guys have always fixed it their whole life. They fixed it our way. We had a stretch in the second half where we got away from that a little bit which is understandable right now.  I was really proud of that and it’s a good sign for us.  

Q Mark, where has Jasper made maybe the biggest stride over the past few weeks especially? And how do you channel all the things that he can do into one focused product, I guess, out there on the court?  

MARK POPE: Jasper, I’m really proud of Jasper because he is trying so hard to learn what we do.  And he hasn’t, he’s got a very unique game, he’s got a very unique skill set. And he has committed himself to trying to do what we do and then letting that part of him that he brings to the game come out through it rather than just going to what he does. And that’s why he’s growing so much so fast.  You know, he’s clearly a really talented player. He’s got a huge future. He’s going to play well because he’s trying to do this the way we do it. It’s going to make him look good and certainly did tonight.  

Q Coach, you had 10 players not play more than 15 minutes and your preseason all SEC guard and projected NBA first round draft pick were not on the floor tonight. How are you going to find minutes for all of these guys when everybody gets back?  

MARK POPE: I actually didn’t think we played this hard as consistently as we can. I thought one of the thing was effective. This Purdue team is great. They are the number one team in the country and they are going to be unbelievable.  They are on the road. None of us have even installed most of what we do yet. There’s all of those things.  They didn’t shoot the ball particularly well tonight. And I’m hoping that part of it was just there was somewhat of a relentless pressure and pace to the game. And so I actually felt like we didn’t play as hard as we are going to have to play to win consistently.  I kind of was looking at the bench and was like, I need fresh bodies.  We will continue to work on our conditioning.  It’s a matter of how hard, how much pressure can we exert on this game every single second of the game.  And that will help us defensively. It will help us offensively. Because it breaks open things. Just that fatigue and unrelenting pressure.  I was sitting in the office with Lee just after I met with the team looking at the box score and I was like, this feels like my 96 team in terms of point distribution.  Can you do that in 25-26?  Can we actually pull it off where we have guys that care so much about each other and so much about Kentucky that they are willing to do this? We are going to see.  If we can do it, it’s a fun way to play, man, it’s pretty special.  

Q Coach, obviously Collin Chandler only had 2 points but led the team in plus minus in 15. What does that say how he can contribute without scoring and what have you seen from him in the off-season?  

MARK POPE: Yeah, he was the highlight for the whole game for me. I would give him the MVP of the game. That’s the defining feature, if this team wants to do something historic, that’s what we need. And we need to champion it and we need to take pride in it and we need to be like, yes, that was me. He was unbelievable.  He played 15 minutes, he was a +15. He was +1 per minute, that’s a ridiculous ratio for anything over six or seven minutes of play. He had a ridiculously spectacular dunk.  I have so much confidence in him to make the right decision on offense and so much confidence in him to be incredibly defensively sound with great energy and you have guys like that, it makes you feel good as a coach because good things are going to happen when he’s on the floor.  You know, the dunk was spectacular but he had two elite level full speed cuts where he hit roll late that broke it open and our bigs finally started rolling. The whole first half, one of the things we were stuck on was we couldn’t get our bigs to roll. I think partly some fatigue and just the head spinning because of the deal.  He really got us started. And then everyone else saw how that felt, the roll guys and live ball, ball handlers. You got Mo making that play and Jasper making that play and DA making that play. It was contagious. He had a massive impact on the game.  

Q Mark, you mentioned in the off-season, you thought Jasper, Otega, Denzel and Collin could be the next guys up when it comes to running the point and they combine for 10 assist and only 4 turnovers for tonight, how did you feel that quartet stepped in for Jaland?  

MARK POPE: I thought they were good.  You know, this Purdue is a unique team. We are going to see very different challenges from other teams. This is a very unique team. You know, their DNA is not to really put a ton of pressure on the ball. They beat you in other ways. I thought our guys, for the most part handled it well. I thought our bigs had a chance to grow in that sense.  You know, BG had a couple elite level reads where he was getting to the second and third cutter that were elite level plays, you know, he got carried away a couple of times.  Malachi had a really important play for him as they were really trying to press and get out of the wings and we were encouraging our bigs to go attack the no gap pressure, and he did, and I was really proud of him because he got all the way down and was bullied all the way down to the rim and finished with a nice left-hand finish.  I think Mo igniting the break was really solid a couple of times.  I thought Jela, even though he’s not allowed to dribble, he actually ignited the break a couple of times and was really effective making the simple play.  

Q Mark, you know, obviously Malachi’s big dunk came after a pretty poor 3-point attempt.  Jasper got a good steal in the first half after giving up a turnover.  For you guys to accomplish what you are wanting to accomplish this year, how important is it for your young guys, your freshman, are you able to respond to that adversity?  

MARK POPE: We must have said next play 10 times in the huddle before we walked out on the floor to start the game. It’s just really important. When you are trying to, like this idea of coming wave after wave after wave and keeping the pressure on, there’s going to be mistakes in the game. And it’s just, we just, if we do this right, the way this team is built to try to compete, kind of using whatever strength is, and we have to move on to the next play.  And I thought those guys did that brilliantly.  In fact, I thought a bunch of guys did.  Kam shot a 25 foot shot, 24 feet, 32 feet, and then came back and banged an impossible shot, moving onto the next one.  We had a bunch of plays like that where guys just moved on to the next play pretty well.  That’s going to be important for us all year long.  We are going to have to get better and better at it.  

Q I’ve got two questions for you.  What do you think guards stepping up with Jaland Lowe being, of course, missing this game, being injured?  What did you also think about Mo Dioubate physicality coming from Alabama to here?  

MARK POPE: I do think there’s going to be a lot of BBB that Mo Dioubate is their favorite player. I mean, he just plays with all of his guts spilling out all over the floor.  He just plays hard, he just plays hard, you know he’s got a lot of fans in my own family right now that say we love this Mo Dioubate, and I do too.  I thought he was great tonight.  

Q Mark, right here.  I know defense was an area he really wanted to focus on this summer.  Matt Painter kind of talked about how there wasn’t much defense in this game.  What can you take away with the lack of defense to improve on going forward?  

MARK POPE: Yeah, I think, listen, I think this is to teams that have traditionally been elite level offensive teams.  I think that our navigation through traffic was poor today. But that’s a credit to what Purdue does.  They wait and they cut hard and they set up cuts and they screen hard and their big bodies, those three guys are big, big bodied guys and we have to get way better at navigating traffic away from the ball.  It’s really, really important.  I thought we did that poorly.  We’ve had a tough time guarding ourselves and we had a tough time being there on the catch. You know, we were trying to open the bigs so that we could take a best route. We were pretty stubborn with it. I felt like we was cutting angles off the first initial screen, I thought we did a poor job cutting angle.  You kind of need a 270 degree kind of cut to actually get under so you can be there on the other side we finally did it.  Pulled up behind and it was an off rhythm shot.  It was different for him.  Those adjustments are things that are really important and we have to get better at. I thought our third defender was really inconsistent on ball screens.  I would like to get to the point to where we are switching way more.  I did think that our monster was effective tonight.  Sorry, I’ll double-team in the post was effective today minus the fouls.  You know, this is exactly what it is, we been practicing for 3.5 weeks, 4 weeks, 4.5 weeks.  That is what this is. It is a preseason game. It was probably the most fun exhibition game I’ve ever been a part of.  I know BBN was totally frustrated about playing the number one ranked team in the country in exhibition.  But I like it, so you guys are going to have to live with it.  

Q Mark, how valuable is a game like this for small situations like at the end of the half?  There’s four seconds left, Purdue is probably really good at executing stuff like that.  

MARK POPE: None of us are clean yet.  You know, neither of us are clean at all.  It was like BH sat on the bench for 19 minutes and 56 seconds and then to be able to put him in there where his length is ridiculous.  This is an incredibly talented player, by the way, he’s going to be a big time pro.  But for him to be responsive and go in there, he’s really difficult in that situation, he’s the best guy on our team by far. And there’s a lot of situations where he’s really good.  And then for Malachi and Andrija to kind of talk out we are in a Brutus defense, which is a little bit of a different defensive scheme.  And for those to be able to talk out the bigs matchup and Malachi to be able to chase that ball without fouling, to do it legally, all of those things were really important.  We also had some really poor execution in short, late clock situations. It’s all a space where we are going to continue to grow and get better.  

Q Mark, back here. I noticed after the game there was a lot of camaraderie.  You were giving towels to put on Jasper’s head.  What did you see from the chemistry from your team today during their first time in Rupp arena?  

MARK POPE: I was proud of our guys.  I thought our bench was elite.  I thought Jaland Lowe was unbelievable on the bench.  I thought Jaland Lowe, I thought he probably be my second player of the game.  He was unbelievable on the bench.  Keeping guys engaged and talking.  I thought our staff was really good on the bench communicating.  We are going to need that. This is going to be like every season is going to be up and down Rocky Road huge challenge season. We are going to have to overcome adversity.  But you know, like we are trying to create habits.  The more you do it the more it becomes a habit. There was some intangible stuff I thought we did pretty well tonight that we are working so hard to make it a habit. Alvin Brooks is probably the leader in all of basketball, actually Alvin Brooks, probably is in terms of body language and team communication.  And he grades our team every single day on every single touch on every single beast mode on every single interaction. It’s a painstaking work, but it’s really important.  We are going to have to continue to have that juice and get better and better and better at it and it shows in post game and we are going to be really successful if we can love each other.  Like, we are going to be really successful if we can care about this team, 51% of us can care about this team, you know, that would be unprecedented if we could get there.  And so our guys are working hard at it.  They’re trying to develop habits, they are working hard to love each other and that’s going to be an every day all season long challenge for us that we are going to keep fighting. I love it.  I think if we can do it, I think if we can do it, not only are we going to be a great team but we are going to be a great example to the world about, just like having something more important than just yourself. And these guys have a chance to be great, so, I mean we haven’t even started the season yet. But those are our goals.  That’s what we’d like to do. Okay?  Thanks guys.