Mark Pope says Kentucky was 'out of character' at Louisville -- starting with a bad pregame experience

Why did Kentucky lack the edge and fire Louisville played with in the rivalry matchup at the KFC Yum! Center this week? The Wildcats were out of character and distracted, starting with a questionable pregame experience Mark Pope isn’t quite ready to talk about.

When asked about his players and the staff handling the emotions of Tuesday night and the other emotional games to come on the schedule, the second-year coach said emotions are good, but it has to be focused and intentional. That was not the case for UK on the road at UofL this week, leading to the poor on-court product we all saw.

“I actually think we did a — you know, I’m not ready to tell the story yet, but at some point, we’ll talk in detail about our pregame experience at Louisville,” Pope said. “It was out of character for us and that’s young and new. I actually don’t want to keep our emotions in check, I just want to keep them focused and I want to keep them intentional.

“I want our guys to have all of the emotion — first of all, what’s the point if you can’t have all the emotion? But I don’t want our guys to be run by their emotion. I want to be able to focus their emotion.”

That comes with the responsibility of being at Kentucky, using the passion and energy for good, not slipping into bad habits and presenting yourself poorly or immaturely.

It’s impossible to be perfect and these circumstances can swing things the wrong direction with Louisville being talented and desperate while factoring in the fact that it was the first true road game of the season, the arena filled with hostile fans craving their first victory in a half-decade. If there was ever a time to get lost in the chaos, this game was the recipe for disaster.

But that doesn’t make it acceptable or something they’ll tolerate the rest of the season.

“I know that sounds like 30,000-foot level stuff, but I’m being very specific on that. That’s one of the things with being an athlete — especially being an athlete in Kentucky — is this ability to kind of not dumb down your emotion and not bridle your emotion even, but to just channel it and have it laser-focused. It’s intentional emotion, so you’re controlling your emotion. Your emotions are not controlling you.

“It is a big deal, it’s a learning process and it’s something that we’ll continue to work on this year.”

Pope initially referred to his team’s play as “dumb effort and ill-timed effort” in reference to the energy and heart they played with at the Yum! Center: “We just divorced ourselves from the very simple, basic principles that can help us be successful,” he said at the time.

What does the opposite of that look like — smart effort, to go with a direct antonym.

He clarified that “dumb” probably wasn’t the best way to describe it. Maybe “distracted” is the better descriptor? That was the other buzzword from his weekly press conference.

“It’s distracted effort, distracted focus. When you’re under pressure and duress, sometimes you just fall into bad habits and default habits, distracted actions. We spent a lot of time the other night being really, really distracted in a disappointing way — but it’s human nature. It’s what it is, it’s what you fight as an athlete, the ability to just kind of get back to focusing on this moment. We didn’t do it very well.” 

What did he learn from that poor experience in enemy territory? Well, enough for the Wildcats to change up practice for the very first time this season to reflect those developments.

“We’re learning so much every single game — this is our first road game, and you learn stuff when you go on the road. Ideally you learn it through winning,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s incredibly painful and you learn it through losing, but every experience we have, (we learn).

“Today will be the first time we’ve had a practice exactly like we’re having today. So we’re gonna learn things.”