LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Sure, go ahead and put up the scores. That's what people will do. It's what I did. On Tuesday night in Rupp Arena, No. 9 Kentucky beat Lipscomb by 29 points. Back in the season opener, an Arkansas team coached by a former Kentucky coach beat Lipscomb by 16, after leading by just four with seven minutes to play.
There is, as they say, more than one way to coach a Cat. This column is not about that. I don't think there is any more debate, regardless of how things go, that Kentucky basketball is in a better place than it was — and it was in a pretty good place already.
But now, under Mark Pope, there's far more alignment between the people in the stands and the guy on the sidelines. Somone asked me what happens when Pope loses a game, as surely he will at some point, the guy isn't infallible, after all. My view – Pope is a guy Kentucky fans can lose with, the same as he is a guy they can win with. They are in it with him.
Having settled that, there's something far more important from Tuesday night's 97-68 win to discuss.
After a signature win over Duke a week ago, Kentucky could be forgiven if it came out a bit flat, if its shots were a bit off from all the slaps on the back players have gotten all week. And few places can back-slap like Big Blue Nation.
Instead, Kentucky came out, took care of its business, maybe even improved a bit off the sparkling performance against Duke that earned it a 10-spot bump in The Associated Press poll — after back-to-back wins over Kansas and No. 13 Notre Dame in Freedom Hall.
Think about that. In the long and storied history of Kentucky basketball, no team had ever climbed 10 spots in the AP poll in a single bound. There have been multiple double-digit drops (five since 2018, in fact), but never a boost like this one. Kentucky had jumped eight spots in the poll three times, most recently in February of 2016.
All of that is to say, conditions were ripe, at least in sportswriter parlance, for a letdown. (Or, if you're a degenerate racetrack type like some of us, a "bounce.")
It turns out, though, that Pope doesn't believe in bounces. He doesn't even worry about letdowns.
"We don't stress, like we don't get nervous, we don't worry because it doesn't actually work," Pope said. "You know, sometimes we think if a team has a letdown after a big win, it's like, 'Oh man, if the coach had just thought about the possibility of it being a letdown and prepared this team for no letdown, it wouldn't have happened.' What happens is we all just overkill, right? We just start pushing that narrative so hard with our team. We don't actually do it at all."
You heard him. What does he do instead?
"We are always going to be focused on what we need to do," Pope said. "And so, we really work hard. It's human nature to worry about that (letting down) a little bit. We really work hard to focus on what we are trying to do. Our guys are really hungry to get better. We are hungry to become a great team. We don't have a lot of time to do it. So, you know, the last game was over and it was kind of onto like, how can we get better? That's the only thing we talk about. And the biology of that, the neuroscience of that is 100 percent in support of that. Right? You know, we are not going to focus on what we don't want to have happen, we are going to focus on what we do want to have happen. And our guys have received that really well. ... That doesn't mean we won't ever have bad results. It just means that we are going to always focus on what we are trying to do and we are going to try to be laser focused on that. We are not going to spend a lot of time thinking about what we do not want to have happen."
And good things happened. Jaxson Robinson had 20 points and seven rebounds. Lamont Butler had 16 points and went 3-3 from beyond the arc. Koby Brea had 12 points and went 3-3 from three-point range. He's now 15 of 19 (78.9%) from beyond the arc. Kentucky as a team is just under 42%.
So, no lectures here about guys not being robots and what all messages the players are getting from the outside. (Shoot, I did the comparison thing there again. My apologies.) Just focus on the next one.
And part of focusing on the next team is actually focusing on the next team. The actual scouting report. Learning some key points of the opponent's attack and focusing on taking those away. Precise details. The building blocks of winning, particularly on defense.
If Pope can get his players' minds on those things, he doesn't have to worry about the other noise.
"I thought we were there on the catch the whole night really well minus the pick-and-pop situations with their five men, which was kind of a calculated decision on our part that worked in our favor," Pope said. "So, I was happy about challenging shots for sure. Both inside the three and outside. I was really proud of us in the first half we only gave up one back door and this is a great cutting team. Actually, almost 10% of their possessions are cuts, which is really high. Guys, you don't see that a lot. And it's like real, real cuts. That way they are similar to us. We only gave up one in the entire first half. I was really proud of that. ... (Lipscomb) punishes you because their scheme is you either have to race through handoffs and ball screens to get over top, or if you try to beat them to it, then it's a backdoor situation, so our guys' train tracks concepts were great tonight in the first half. I was really proud of that."
Train tracks concepts? Basically, it's about discipline on defense, maintaining fundamental positioning relative to the ball and to teammates so as to not allow gaps in the defense that cutters can exploit.
Or something like that.
Regardless, let's just say Kentucky remains on the right track.
Kentucky Basketball Coverage:
- Robinson scores 20 points and No. 9 Kentucky rides hot shooting to blow out Lipscomb 97-68
- CRAWFORD | Heart, humility, halftime fixes: Pope's winning mix for Kentucky to beat Duke
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