LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Well, you can forget talking about Kentucky’s 83-66 loss to Michigan State Tuesday night. There’s a whole new bag of issues.
Because if what happened in the game was disappointing, what happened after was downright dystopian.
I wasn’t in New York for the game. Like most of you, I was waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for Mark Pope’s postgame news conference, and his radio interview with Tom Leach.
Pope didn’t show up for the presser for 45 minutes after the loss. And when he did, he talked in quiet, clipped code. Later, Leach mentioned how much time he spent with his team after the game and asked what he talked about.
“We talked about a lot of things,” Pope said.
That was it. No details forthcoming. It was a Samuel Beckett moment.
And what made is all the more unusual is that Pope, on a normal day, is a walking elaboration. Bounding with evangelical optimism. He gives such inspiring five-minute answers to yes-or-no questions that you want to stich them in needlepoint and hang them in the hallway.
Now, I’ve been around a lot of coaches after losses. Knight. Pitino. Calipari. You don’t have to be a Basketball Bennie to know things can get a bit prickly. Pitino once said, a few days after snapping at a reporter, “Guys, I’m such an ass when we lose.”
At least Pope didn’t take anyone’s head off. Except, maybe, his own.
He sounded like a guy who had seen the director’s cut of the season and didn’t like how it ends. He called his team “disappointed, discouraged and completely discombobulated.” And he said his messages weren’t resonating with his players.
“I feel like the identity we felt like we created has maybe been stripped away and maybe we're facing some reality right now,” he said. “And that can be an incredibly, incredibly painful process. It's a terrifying process.”
That went to a dark place pretty fast. He skipped right over highly irritating or mildly infuriating to "terrifying," which feels like another level. I mean, one minute they’re asking about the defense and the next he’s staring into the abyss.
A few minutes later, speaking with Jeff Goodman of Field of 68 in a separate interview, Pope said he’d thought he had a better pulse on his team, and that he thought he’d done a better job of coaching than he realized he had to this point. When Goodman asked if he meant in motivating his team or in X’s and O’s, Pope said both.
“It's everything. I think it’s developing a culture. It's the right care, it's the right focus, it's the right schemes, it's the right X's and O's,” Pope said. “It's a poor job. The nice thing is, I can fix it. Like, we can fix it. But it's a really disappointing result.”
I used to work with a guy who, when he made a mistake in the paper, would pull a $5 or $10 bill out of his pocket and tear it up, saying he hadn't earned it. I hope nobody let Pope near a shredder when he got home.
So, I have to say this. Postgame comments aren’t therapy. They’re damage control. They’re a coach’s best chance to settle a restless fanbase, deflect pressure from his players, and reframe what just happened. A chance to lend perspective. But instead of message management, Pope veered into an existential direction.
And I’m here for it. I’ll sit here and talk about falling short and self-doubt and bouncing back and all that stuff all night. But I’m fairly certain you don’t want to read about it.
My job is to put a bow on this whole pile of garbage and maybe crack a joke or two and write a few lines you might remember, then hit "post." If I can hit some deeper life lessons, all the better.
But in general, I want to talk about how Kentucky fell nine spots in KenPom’s offensive efficiency ratings in a single game, and about how anybody a computer drops like that ought to fill out a support ticket.
But the pathos in some of these postgame comments prevents it. Beyond which, I know that the comments will only serve to ratchet up the scrutiny on Pope and his team, not relieve it.
Because of course, there is no more even-keel group of people to deal with such a crisis than the Kentucky basketball fanbase.
That was sarcasm. You got that, right?
Tuesday night, they were feeling the vibes shift in real time. Before the end of the postgame call-in shows, fans were breaking down pregame video of Pope walking into the arena like the Zapruder film. They were posting video of Brandon Garrison standing as still as if he were having his portrait painted while offensive rebounds fell like anvils around him.
They have started file folders with every strange thing Pope has said in the past couple of weeks, including whatever weird thing it was he referred to before the Louisville game. Somewhere in Kentucky, there's a bulletin board set up with photos, index cards, thumbtacks and yarn.
You have to admit, when the coach is questioning the job he’s done to this point and calling the job ahead “monumental,” all of a sudden the whole enterprise seems more fragile than it did coming in.
But Pope did sound a note of hope.
“We won't fail this season,” he said, before leaving his news conference. “We just have failed up till today, and we will build an organization where won't be disrupted every time someone steps in and steps out. We'll have a team identity, not an individual identity. Until we get there, we're going to really struggle. That's my job. … I'm doing it poorly. I won't do it poorly for much longer.”
That’s either reassurance or foreshadowing, depending on how you hear it.
What we do know is this: Kentucky didn’t just lose to Michigan State. It lost a little clarity, a little momentum, and — for one very strange night — a little of its coach’s voice.
It’s a voice the program can’t afford to lose for long.
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