Mark Pope pushes back on locker room concerns: 'I wouldn't say that's even close to our issue.'

Something has just felt off with this Kentucky team to begin the season. The players haven’t seemed particularly close — maybe we were just spoiled by last year’s group? — and Mark Pope has hit the lowest of lows in terms of body language and general response to the Wildcats’ losses to Louisville and Michigan State. It’s not just local media and fans noticing it, hyper-focused on the day-to-day without seeing the big picture. The team’s head-scratching start both on and off the floor has become a national talking point.

“It would be insulting to say the Wildcats don’t care. Athletes care,” CNN’s Dana O’Neil said. “But perhaps this crew is currently misguided in what exactly it ought to care about.”

“Kentucky, now 3-2 with losses to both ranked high-major foes it has faced, looks and sounds like a team with problems money alone can’t solve,” Brendan Marks of The Athletic added.

Even Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 and Matt Norlander of CBS Sports — arguably Pope’s two closest buddies in media — can’t quite figure out what’s going on with their guy, the latter actually calling Kentucky “the most disappointing team in college basketball through the first two and a half weeks of the season” after spending all of Tuesday with the Wildcats.

Between that and all of the questionably welcomed speculation coming on the heels of the Louisville “pregame experience” — which ended up being a big nothingburger, according to Pope — getting to the point where talk of potential fistfights and off-court drama with girlfriends dominated social media, message boards, radio and podcast gossip, it’s no surprise the Kentucky head coach was asked if there was a serious chemistry concern to monitor with his second group in Lexington.

His answer? That couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Yeah, I mean, I think our guys love each other. They care about each other. They’re trying to fight for each other,” Pope said.

Love isn’t just a black and white thing, however — it’s something that develops and grows with time. It’s a process, just like any relationship or marriage. There is no on and off switch for those feelings, in love or out of love, like or dislike.

Five games into the season, his players love each other and they’re going to continue growing closer as the season progresses. That’s like every team Pope has ever been a part of as a coach and player.

“For every team in America, there’s a – like for every team in the world, for every team I’ve ever been on, there’s always a sense of like this growth,” he said. “The more you can love each other, the more you can sacrifice for each other, the more you care about each other. It comes as you work on it. Loving is – loving is not something that happens. Loving is a verb that you actively do, right? I think this group is extraordinary. I think we’re going to be great together.”

Turbulence makes people react differently, which is what we’re experiencing now coming off the MSU and UofL losses. For a group of competitors that expects to compete at the highest level every night, when they fall short of that, they respond negatively — because, again, they care.

That’s not a sign of waning love or chemistry concerns overall. It’s a sign that they want to win.

“We haven’t played well. We’ve had a couple of really discouraging losses. It’s not what we’re going to be. It’s not who we are,” Pope said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with chemistry. I think it has to do with playing well and playing the game well and understanding how to play the game well and believing in how to play the game well.

“I think this team actually – I think these guys care about each other. They love each other. They’ve served together.”

If anything, he loves where things stand with his team’s, well, love. No concerns about chemistry or turmoil or whatever other rumors are out there about the Wildcats.

“I would say that we have a really special foundation of a team with great chemistry, and we’re going to continue to evolve,” Pope said. “So I should have said that more concisely, but I don’t think that’s our issue at all right now. I wouldn’t say that’s even close to our issue. I don’t think that pops up on my radar at all.

“This is a really special group of guys that are trying to find themselves right now.”

Pope then stopped for a moment before digging deeper into the topic, wanting to add that it extends to conversations about player reputations and how we, as a basketball society, attach individual plays and moments to big-picture traits. A bad shot doesn’t always mean a player needs to be described as selfish, and a bad turnover doesn’t always mean a player needs to be described as reckless, to give a couple of examples.

There is more grey area to work with, Pope says.

“We want to paint people as black and white. We want to say that there are some people that are super selfish and some people that just are altruistic and give to the team,” he said. “That’s like – that really does a disservice to everybody because there’s nothing real in any of that. What happens a lot is a guy might come off as making us what we would term a ‘selfish’ play, because he so desperately wants to help his team. That’s actually more often the case.”

But he understands there is a void to fill in sports and people are going to talk one way or another. The conversations are going to happen no matter what.

“It’s fun because it’s just fun. We need stuff to talk about and we need to chat, but this is a really good group of guys that really care about each other, that are trying so hard to do this for each other,” Pope said. “But sometimes it manifests itself in a way that’s exactly the opposite of what you’re searching for.”