C.L. Brown, Louisville Courier JournalSat, November 22, 2025 at 1:45 AM UTC·4 min readLEXINGTON — Kentucky’s Mark Pope proved he can coach last season. This season, as early as it is, we’ll find out if he can cut it at UK.
The No. 13 Wildcats bounced back from Tuesday’s 17-point loss to Michigan State as expected, by pounding outmanned Loyola Maryland 88-46 on Friday night at Rupp Arena.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementExpect a similar outcome Wednesday when Tennessee Tech comes to Lexington ready to be served up as the proverbial turkey before Thanksgiving.
But in December, things get real. Very real. Four of their first five games next month come against ranked teams: No. 19 North Carolina, No. 12 Gonzaga, No. 25 Indiana, No. 16 St. John’s.
We’ve seen how Kentucky has fared in its first two matchups against ranked teams, trailing by 20 points in a 96-88 loss to No. 6 Louisville and 24 points in the 83-66 loss to the No. 18 Spartans.
As out of sorts as the Cats looked Tuesday in New York, they were a lot crisper in their execution against the Greyhounds. They shot 48.7% from the field and made 10 3-pointers after matching a season-low seven against Michigan State.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat’s the easy part.
Pope showed he knows ball early last season against Duke, when a peek into the huddle showed he had prescient instructions for what was coming in the final seconds.
He’s proven himself in the X's and O's, as his teams at BYU ranked in the top 25 of adjusted offense in three of his five seasons, according to KenPom.com. Last season’s team at UK finished 10th, and it ranked 13th headed into Friday night’s game.
That much, he’s got covered.
Pope knows and loves using analytics, and they could project how this team is supposed to look and who is supposed to fit each role. But there are no numbers to crunch into how personalities and egos are going to fit and what’s the best way to motivate the players.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd that seemed to be the problem on Tuesday.
Friday night’s game saw one change that could have been a direct result of the loss, as freshman center Malachi Moreno started in place of Brandon Garrison. Moreno averaged 10.2 points and 6.8 rebonds from off the bench in the first five games, which bested Garrison’s 6.2 points and 4.8 rebounds. But mainly Moreno just seemed to be more consistent.
Garrison had arguably his worst game of the season against Michigan State with missed defensive assignments and gave up offensive rebounds.
(Tulane transfer Kam Williams also made his first start, but that could have been solely because Mouhamed Dioubate sat out with an injury.)
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPope probably needed to shake up the lineup to get everyone’s attention.
Being the coach at Kentucky is as much about managing the chaos as it is drawing up game plans. Pope slipped up in that regard when he hinted that something got UK out of character before the Louisville game, but he declined to elaborate what happened.
Given another chance at the news conference before Michigan State, he remained vague as he tried to downplay its importance. What Pope failed to realize is in the absence of real information, people are eager to assume and create their own narrative of what’s wrong based on hearsay and innuendo.
It has turned what would be chalked up as simply a slow start at most schools into a mini-controversy at UK.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhat’s wrong with the Cats won’t cease being asked through tweets, dissected on sports radio shows, pontificated on podcasts and blamed for tirades on TikTok just because they pummeled Loyola.
This can’t be solved until next month when the real tests come and Pope has to manage it all, because that’s the one thing he can’t shield any of his players from. They have to live in the UK basketball bubble, and they’ve probably already heard the same rumors and innuendo that have circulated since the loss to Louisville.
This column will be updated.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at [email protected], follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Can Kentucky basketball's Mark Pope cut it this season? We'll find out
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