Pope Likes 'Competitive' Cats
Kentucky head coach Mark Pope built his first UK roster with a ton of experience. This year’s team does not have nearly the experience of last year’s squad, but they do have one thing that Pope likes very much.
“This is a competitive group. They love to compete. We have competitive souls on this group,” Pope said. “It’s interesting. I’ll take (Denzel Aberdeen) and (Jaland Lowe) as examples. They’re probably best friends off the court, and then on the court they are just torturing each other every single day. It’s so fun to watch. You know, you have a guy like Collin Chandler, who has grown so much, who is the most kind, mild-mannered, loving guy off the court, and he just wants to rip your heart out on the court right now. Mo Dioubate has just brought this beautiful, competitive, bully mentality to our team. I could go down the list. That’s been really fun.”
Pope admits that the inexperience, at least as it relates to last season’s team, will be something the staff is constantly working on.
“We’re not quite as veteran as we were last year, and that’s just going to be a work in progress,” Pope said. “We were blessed last year. We had seven super seniors to start the season on the roster. That’s hard to replace in that sense.”
Pope believes that this year’s Cats can be flexible because of their mobility.
“I do think one of the things I think we’re way more mobile. I think we’re really, really mobile at all five positions. I think we have a ton of growing ball-handling, ball-moving capacity that I think is going to bode well for us.”
Pope does have the luxury of having four returning players from last year’s team, something he did not have last season. He has seen improvement from the quartet of returnees.
“Trent Noah is a 1.76 points per possession in live play right now. I’ve never seen that number ever in the history of college basketball,” Pope said. “I mean, it’s only two weeks and — is this the first day of week three? Trent has made a massive jump. Collin Chandler is leading the team in defensive impact metric. Both those guys have made Herculean, massive jumps. Most impressive of all, Brandon Garrison. Brandon Garrison is winning conditioning runs at the end of practice. You want to talk about wanting to feel like I don’t even know what planet I’m living on right now. I’m so proud of this kid. Watching those guys grow, and Otega, of course, has been dealing with his toe, but the way he’s grown as a leader.”
Having played at UK, and now with a year as the head coach under his belt, Pope knows the expectation in Lexington. And he embraces the challenge.
“Some people might say last year, a veteran team, so there’s a lot of pressure to win,” Pope said. “This year you have a deep team, so there’s a lot of pressure to win. Next year it will be something else. What you don’t understand if you are not here at Kentucky is that this is all the pressure, always. If we had three players on this roster, the expectation would be we would still go one a national championship. That never changes here. It’s one of the things that sets Kentucky apart from everyone else.”
Pope and his staff have assembled a deep, talented roster than has a little bit of everything. The Big Blue Nation hopes that translates into even more success on the court this year.
