Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s No. 18 Wildcats were blown out 94-59 by the No. 11 Gonzaga Bulldogs on Friday evening, marking the coach’s worst loss since he was appointed last year. The defeat dropped the Wildcats to 5-4 for the season.
Kentucky fans inside Bridgestone Arena booed the team off the court after the demolition job by the Bulldogs, which represented their fourth loss to a ranked team this season.
Roster Problems of Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats Analyzed by Jalen Rose
After Kentucky’s blowout loss to Gonzaga, during an appearance on TNT Sports’ Big East Conference coverage, analyst Jalen Rose, a retired NBA star, broke down the real problem facing Pope’s roster.
“There is such a thing as having too much talent,” Rose said. “Everybody gets a role, but do you accept it and master it? What happens is, a lot of those five through ten guys, a lot of them feel like, ‘I should be starting,’ or, ‘I should be playing more minutes.’ Or, ‘If he keeps going like this, I’m gonna transfer.'”
The Wildcats did not score a field goal in the first nine minutes of the contest against the Bulldogs, first registering via Denzel Aberdeen when they were already down 19-2. They shot 26.7% from the field (7 of 34 from deep), the worst percentage under Pope’s stewardship.
During his postgame news conference, Pope addressed the boos that the Wildcats received from Kentucky fans after their performance against Gonzaga, challenging his team to fix their poor form.
“I don’t have a great answer for you, other than we’ve kind of diminished a little bit into a bad spot right now. We have to dig ourselves out of it, and it’s going to be an internal group thing,” Pope said. “And we feel the responsibility we have to this university and this fan base.
“And all the boos that we earned tonight were incredibly well deserved. Mostly for me. And we have to fix it. That’s all we have. As you roll through life, you just have your response. And our response so far has not been adequate. And we have to fix it.”
It doesn’t get any easier for Pope, as the Wildcats host the No. 22 Indiana Hoosiers and the No. 23 St. John’s Red Storm at Rupp Arena in consecutive weeks to finish off a hefty nonconference schedule. They then open SEC play with a tough trip to Tuscaloosa to face the No. 12 Alabama Crimson Tide on Jan. 3.
