CRAWFORD | Pope preaches control, but Kentucky loses grip in Auburn heartbreak | UK Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Mark Pope waited until he stepped away from the microphones, which is the modern equivalent of stepping behind the curtain, except the curtain has ears.

Then he said what coaches have been saying since the invention of whistles and injustice.

"Mitch, if those MFers try to fine me, screw 'em," he told Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart. "I didn't say a word about how they cheated us."

It was not whispered. It was not disguised. It was delivered at a volume designed to be heard by everyone except, officially, anyone important.

Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford

In the SEC, this is what passes for discretion.

Moments earlier, Pope had stood at the podium delivering a sermon on control, the way a man might preach calm while white-knuckling the armrests of an airplane seat.

"We refuse to give away our power," he said after Kentucky's 75–74 loss at Auburn. "We refuse to give control to people outside our program."

He repeated it several times, as if power were a loose dog that might wander off if not called back frequently.

"We don't make excuses," he said. "Regardless of how disgraceful things are… how embarrassing, personal, awful, unacceptable things are… we refuse to give away our power."

And then, within walking distance of the podium, he reached for an excuse the way a drowning man reaches for driftwood.

Not because he is weak. Because he is human. And because Kentucky basketball does not deal in small emotions.

The Wildcats had the game in their hands, literally. Up one, ball inbounds, 14.3 seconds left. One clean pass, a couple of free throws, a polite exit through the back door.

Instead, a whistle. Collin Chandler called for an offensive foul, the ball turning over, the arena becoming a jet engine with hardwood floors. Auburn missed once. Missed again. Then Elyjah Freeman tipped in the third attempt with 1.2 seconds left, just enough time to break a heart but not enough to repair one.

Pope, bound by league decorum, did not accuse or indict. He spoke of disgraceful things. Unacceptable things. Personal things. The sort of things that hover just outside the vocabulary of fines.

Everyone understood.

Then came the off-stage version, unvarnished, unfiltered, and in its own way more honest than anything spoken into the microphone.

Because the truth about power is that it is easiest to talk about when you have plenty of it.

Kentucky, at the moment, is operating on a limited supply. Three straight losses. Two games in which late leads evaporated like water on hot pavement. A roster thinned by injuries, forcing heroic nights from players like Otega Oweh, who continued to play like a man trying to hold a season together, 29 points at Auburn.

And still it wasn't enough.

Great teams build margins large enough to survive a bad call, a bad bounce, a bad minute. They pad the furniture before the fall. Kentucky has been living without padding.

So the game came down to a scramble, a rebound nobody quite secured, a final flick toward the rim, and the sound of 9,000 people discovering religion all at once.

Pope spoke afterward about refusing to surrender control to outside forces. It was admirable, even noble, in the way generals sound noble when describing battles already lost.

But basketball is not governed by speeches. It is governed by rebounds, free throws, and the stubborn refusal to let chaos choose the ending.

Kentucky did not lose because of one whistle. No team that good ever truly does. It lost because it left the door open long enough for fate — wearing an Auburn jersey — to walk in uninvited.

The Wildcats will still go to the NCAA Tournament. Programs like Kentucky do not vanish because of February heartbreak. But the path is narrowing, the margin shrinking, the sense of inevitability replaced by something far less comfortable.

Uncertainty.

The first three-game losing streak Pope’s tenure. A fourth straight double-digit loss season, just the second time that has ever happened at Kentucky.

Pope says his team refuses to give away its power. Saturday night suggested something else: that power, like victory, is easiest to keep when you never let the game get close enough for someone else to take it.