LEXINGTON, Ky. (WDRB) — The most frustrating look for any college basketball coach is the “looking for answers” look. Sometimes, “I don’t know” is the only right answer. But when it is coming from a guy making millions of dollars at the head of a program, it’s a concerning thing to hear.
Yet, that was the answer Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope had to offer after No. 1-ranked Auburn dismantled his team 94-78 on Saturday afternoon in Rupp Arena. The ABC broadcast of the game was knocked off the air in the second half, courtesy of a fire adjacent to the production truck that knocked out power to the vehicle. Reports that the fire happened in a dumpster are not confirmed.
After the game, some struggled to understand what looked like a lack of energy from the Wildcats. Others referred to the “all access” glimpses of the pregame speeches of both coaches. Pope’s was measured and analytical. Bruce Pearl of Auburn offered fire and brimstone. Those comparisons often are overrated. Often, playing against a better team will make players look slow or sluggish. Still, Pope allowed that his team was not in enough of an attack mode. And he confessed he wasn’t sure why.
“I don’t know, actually, is the answer,” Pope said. “. . . The only time we had any flow in the game was when we had some pace, and we just gave up on a pace game. We gave up on a full-court game. You know, I can't tell you how many times we grab a rebound and then we're frozen. That's the exact opposite of the team that we are, that we built. Now clearly, we're dealing with some complicated rotation changes. But that's where our life is. That's where we're great. That's why we've been one of the top offensive teams in the country, and we failed to actually push that.”
On top of the loss, the sixth-worst in Rupp history for the Wildcats, Pope shared the news that the program will play the rest of the season without Jaxson Robinson, their No. 3 scorer and backup point guard. It’s another injury for a team already slowed by a shoulder injury to starting point guard Lamont Butler and a season-ending foot injury to backup point guard Kerr Kriisa.
Butler played against Auburn and appeared to come through the game in good shape, though he’s not back to the form he showed early in the season.
Kentucky coaches have known for a while that Robinson would require the wrist surgery that he’ll finally get on Wednesday. He’d been hoping to get through the season. But the team knew well before Saturday's game that Robinson was lost.
Did that development take some wind out of the team’s sails? It’s possible. I’ve seen it happen. But more than that, the constant adjustments. Losing Butler fundamentally changed the way Kentucky had to play. Losing Andrew Carr for a time did the same. Losing Robinson, again, changes roles. Kentucky has shown an amazing ability to adapt to those things. Most of those Quad 1 wins came without their full lineup. So did the wins against Top 5 teams. But the constant adjustments take time. You don’t just lose a guy and compensate one game later. And you don’t just get a guy back and make the adjustment instantly.
Amari Williams has been a consistent strength for Kentucky’s basketball team.
And Kentucky‘s injuries, which have taken the team’s strength from outside to in to back out to back in, make them no less complicated. Kentucky’s best lineup, in terms of season plus-minus (Butler, Otega Oweh, Robinson, Andrew Carr and Amari Williams) has played just 13% of the team‘s possessions this season. Duke’s best lineup has played 20%. Auburn, by comparison, has three lineups that are pretty much equally best – and those three have been on the court 30% of the time.
“Credit goes to Auburn,” Pope said. “They're a good team, and they made really hard shots tonight, and their switching was a de-energizer for us. We didn't respond to it well at all. We kind of let frustration bounce a little bit. There's a whole slew of excuses, late travel, late game, all the things with a quick turnaround, but at the end of the day, that’s just what you deal with as a basketball player and I failed to lead our team today to have the energy that is required for us to come out and be great. It's not a lack of desire. It was a whole cocktail of some energy miscues, some being-sped-up miscues. Some terrific shot-making from Auburn, all put together, resulted in a really, really terrible day for us.”
Meanwhile, Auburn lost its starting point guard, Denver Jones, after nine minutes on Saturday and didn’t miss a beat. In fact, Tahaad Pettiford stepped in and delivered 21 points and four assists in his place.
The game was over early. When Myles Price banked in back-to-back three-pointers to complete his own personal 14-point scoring burst in the opening 5 1/2 minutes, you knew which way it was going. Kentucky battled back throughout the first half, only to lose its grip on the rope in the final minutes, when Auburn built a 15-point lead by the half.
It would only get worse for the Wildcats, who turned it over six times in the opening three minutes of the second half, including five in a span of 1:01.
Pearl had his team ready, even if it wasn’t at its best, either. Johni Broome, the Tigers’ national player of the year candidate, scored only nine points and had just one at the half.
“Kentucky’s big guys are good,” Pearl said. “So we didn’t have as big an advantage inside. We knew we were going to have to make shots against Kentucky… Taking the three ball away from Kentucky is important. Coach Pope runs the best five-out anywhere in college basketball. But we run some five-out too, and because we run some, we know how to defend it. And we did a great job defending it, and yet we still ourselves, got some great five-out looks.”
The question now for Kentucky is what’s next? This is still a team capable of beating some of the best teams in the country. Is the team capable of beating Auburn? It didn’t look like it on Saturday. But Kentucky is a team that has beaten Duke, beaten Tennessee twice, beaten Florida, Gonzaga, Texas A&M, and Louisville.
What Kentucky needs to do is get through its next three or four or however many games against SEC competition it has left, re-inflate itself from a physical and emotional standpoint with the players it has remaining, and go into the NCAA Tournament with some energy. Win in the first round, take the matchups as they come, and see what happens.
If N.C. State can make a Final Four, this Kentucky team can make a run. If Lamont Butler can get there with San Diego State, maybe he can make a run with Kentucky. This Kentucky team isn’t going to be dominant — against the best teams or the rest of the teams. But it can win, if it is playing its game.
Kentucky players huddle before their game against No. 1 Auburn on March 1, 2025 in Rupp Arena.
The odds against Kentucky making a run are long, given its defensive profile. The Wildcats rank 65th nationally in defensive efficiency, and it’s getting late in the game to re-invent yourself on the defensive end. Pope thought his team had been making progress in that area. After Saturday, he’s not so sure. Their average negative margin over 40 minutes against Auburn (11.6 points) was their second worst of the season (trailing by an average of 14.3 in its loss at Ole Miss).
“We really struggled with that,” Pope said when asked about his team’s perimeter defense. “Give credit to Auburn. The first six minutes they had back-to-back threes off the glass. Sometimes there is a little bit of that involved, but we certainly didn’t ring the bell. Schematically we didn’t. Individually we didn’t. That’s a place where we were very poor tonight. We’ve actually been making strides, but we’ve regressed a little bit tonight.”
Pope has been piecing his team together with chicken wire and duct tape for most of the second half of the season. And as anyone who has worked with those materials knows, they will work for a time, but eventually you have to rip the thing back up and actually fix something, or at least change the tape and rearrange the wire.
In past years, Kentucky has rolled into the tournament with plenty of talent but lost to inspired teams of lesser quality. Maybe this year, Kentucky can manage to be the inspired team and get a shot of life from post-SEC existence.
Losing by 16 at home on the first day of March doesn’t inspire confidence. But as Kentucky fans well know, strange things happen in the tournament. Maybe their team can be one of them.
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