Mark Pope 'thought (he) had a better pulse' on this team, but he needs a better pulse of the fanbase

Anything Mark Pope touched turned to gold in his debut season at Kentucky, pushing all of the right buttons with the most passionate fanbase in college basketball from the second he took the job. He made promises of winning games that mattered again, regular season to SEC Tournament to NCAA Tournament, understanding the assignment of banner No. 9 — plus fun things like returning to Maui and bringing back the denim. Every box was being checked, and it led to a feel-good run to the Sweet 16 with some massive wins along the way to make the slip-ups not feel so serious. It was the honeymoon period in every sense of the phrase.

Two weeks into his sophomore campaign and those do-no-wrong feelings have evaporated, and it’s been totally deserved. The on-court product stinks out loud right now, but we all know that. Just a week after peeing down its leg at Louisville, Kentucky managed to follow that up with a laugh-out-loud effort against Michigan State in the Champions Classic — a second consecutive blowout loss in Madison Square Garden, just a year removed from doing the same against Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic. Did you know those two Big Apple outings were the worst shooting performances of Pope’s young time in Lexington? 35.1 percent overall and 23.3 percent from deep against the Spartans, 29.8 percent from the field and 18.2 percent from three against the Buckeyes.

The latter was disheartening because it was a letdown after far exceeding expectations to start the year with wins over Duke, Gonzaga and Louisville. The former was a disaster because this program proudly boasts the most expensive roster in college basketball with nothing but an exhibition win over No. 1 Purdue and the BBN United Tipoff Classic Presented by Kentucky Tourism trophy to show for it.

I’d rather have another GLOBL JAM gold medal than these equally meaningless accolades.

Tonight marked a 14th game in 19 tries away from Rupp Arena with the Wildcats trailing going into halftime under Pope. They’ve lost all but three with two pretty egregious examples of that in eight total days. They got destroyed on the glass 41-24, had just 11 assists on 18 makes compared to 23 assists on 30 makes and allowed a 50.7 percent scoring rate at 1.169 points per possession. It followed the Louisville script, now giving up an average of just under 90 points per game against power conference teams, despite coming into the season touted as a top-10 defensive roster in college basketball.

I’ll take the uncontested threes for Michigan State and the playmaking woes with Jaland Lowe out indefinitely, even the defense being on total fraud watch. I’m not so fond of the PR nightmare that Pope has been over the last eight days, however, transitioning from humble and grateful to whiny and pouty with some unfortunate hints of being a sore loser.

“We’re disappointed and discouraged, and completely discombobulated right now. … I’ve got to do a better job,” he said after the MSU loss. “My messaging is not resonating with the guys right now. That’s my responsibility.”

On the surface, those are fine quotes. The ones that followed, however, should make you slam the panic button if you’re a Kentucky fan.

“If you build an organization the right way, then your identity is not about an individual person,” Pope continued. “Your identity is about a collective group, and it shouldn’t matter if we had built a great organization and a great culture, which I have clearly failed to do up until today. But we won’t fail this season; we just have failed up until today.”

It starts with the absolute nonsense that was and continues to be the “pregame experience” that led to Kentucky playing “out of character” at Louisville, which Pope has failed to properly address after unnecessarily putting it out in the open with zero context, allowing speculation to run wild about serious locker room issues derailing this team while also coming across as an excuse. When given the chance to clarify a few days later, he shared an unserious answer about being a “big Taylor Swift fan” who “just like(s) to leave out these little things that just keep everybody wondering and guessing” — because it’s apparently fun to “prognosticate” about the players hosting a Fight Club at the KFC Yum! Center, as legend would have it.

Back on the big stage at MSG, his team got punched in the mouth early and continued to take blows until they laid there lifeless on the mat with nothing left to give. Then he responded by saying his team was in the middle of an individual-first identity crisis with culture concerns that needed to be addressed. That doesn’t sound like a group obsessed with representing the name on the front of their uniforms, not the back. I mean, Pope just had to put the starters back in with the team up a hundred in the final minutes against Eastern Illinois to make sure they’re hustling back on defense — and threatening sprints if they don’t. Perhaps gloating about having the nation’s best NIL budget all offseason backfired?

“Right now, we feel like we’ve got a beautiful Ferrari, and we can’t wait to take it for a spin,” he said in October, barely over a month ago.

Oops.

Last year’s group was so easy to root for because it played like one with something to prove, pouring everything into their short time in Lexington and making up for talent with heart. This one plays like a group ready for the final horn to sound so they can all head to the bank and cash their game checks together as a form of team bonding.

They can’t shoot, can’t play defense and can’t make plays for each other while Pope is getting circles run around him as a coach against actual competition. They’re getting outhustled, out-toughed and out-physicaled, just unacceptable across the board considering this team’s depth, experience and on-paper talent.

The response, after a 45-minute wait for the brutally-short press conference and even shorter one-on-ones with Jeff Goodman and Tom Leach ? “I’m excited to see if we can figure it out.”

That’ll inspire confidence just five games into the regular season.

Pope looks and sounds like a guy with buyer’s remorse, dejected about overspending on a roster without clear-cut stars and glaring holes both physically and mentally. That’s evident in the 36 different five-man combinations he’s used against UofL and MSU with just one combination — his starters — playing more than six minutes on the floor together, just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

Can he fix it the way he says he can and will? Unfortunately, the punishment will be beating up on two teams without a pulse until the competition picks back up in December, absolutely nothing they can say or do over the next couple of weeks to silence the deafening noise. He just has to sit in it for a while.

Maybe he should use this time to get a feel for the pulse of the fanbase, one of his better traits as a rookie last year. This time, though, the honeymoon shine is no more.