Mark Pope tossed t-shirts, joked about turnovers, and looked to the future after the game

Forty-five minutes after Kentucky clinched the BBN Invitational, Mark Pope walked back onto the Rupp Arena floor to another large audience awaiting his postgame radio interview with Tom Leach. This time, Pope came with t-shirts–a whole basket full–that he launched one by one toward the cheering and begging fans filling Sections 12-16 late into Tuesday night.

During breaks in Pope’s postgame conversation with Leach, he signed as many basketballs as time allowed for the kids lining the front row. With school out, Rupp Arena felt especially full of young Kentucky fans, and several stuck around for the radio show, hoping to get a signature or a closer look at UK’s head coach.

“No school tomorrow? We can stay here and party all night long,” Pope told the crowd in his opening comments, which drew applause. Then, a Thanksgiving joke about the game.

“It’s giving season… but we should not be giving the ball away.”

Early on, turnovers were a big problem for the Wildcats against WKU. Kentucky had three turnovers in the first three minutes of the game: two on bad passes by Otega Oweh and Jaxson Robinson and a third on a lost ball by Amari Williams. Williams had four of Kentucky’s seven turnovers at halftime.

Pope joked, “I told the guys it’s Thanksgiving; it is a giving season. But we should not be giving the ball away like we were early. There was a little miscommunication on my part. We’re always trying to share, but we just needed to share with our team out there today.”

The Wildcats were more careful with the ball after halftime, turning it over only four times in the second half as they pulled away to win by 19 points against a team Pope believes will help Kentucky in the long term.

“I thought our guys did a great job of tightening the ship,” Pope said of the adjustment. “Credit Western Kentucky too. We were feeling pressure the whole night. We’ll get better and better as we see that more and experience it more.”

WKU’s pressure was good for Kentucky’s long-term growth

The fans may prefer the 100-point games and 50-point blowouts, but Pope believes the challenge of playing Western Kentucky will help the Wildcats long term because the Hilltoppers’ defensive style is similar to many teams in the Southeastern Conference.

“Everything we do is designed to really torture a pressure defensive team,” he explained, “which is going to be really important for us because in the SEC there are a lot of pressure teams, so this was an unbelievable gift for us in the pursuit of getting better.

“This Western Kentucky program is a proud, great program,” Pope added. “They’ve had amazing success and they care about basketball and they have a great culture. Their kids came and played hard and gave us exactly what we needed to continue to grow and get better. A very different look. A pressure look that is going to be incredibly helpful for our growth, so it was a great night.”

It was a really great night for the fans who stuck around for Pope and those free t-shirts.