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Kentucky basketball head coach Mark Pope made his coaching debut on Wednesday night as the Wildcats hosted Kentucky Wesleyan for an exhibition matchup. Pope played college basketball at Kentucky back in the day, and he was hired to be the head coach of the team after John Calipari left last offseason. Like always, expectations are high for the Wildcats.
Mark Pope came to back to the Kentucky basketball program to win, but he's bound to lose a game eventually. He joked on Wednesday that when that inevitably happens, Wildcats fans will burn his house down.
“You know, I mean, like, we’re deadly serious about winning,” Pope said, according to an article from On3. “Winning matters. We’re here to win. Like, this is Kentucky. The first time we don’t win a game, you guys are all going to go burn my house down, okay.”
Hopefully that's a bit of a stretch, but you get the point. Mark Pope and his Wildcats are serious about winning, and they understand that the expectation is for them to win big every year. It's Pope's job to make that happen.
Kentucky basketball looked good in their exhibition
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It was just an exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan, but the Wildcats easily took care of business on Wednesday night as they cruised to a 123-52 win. It doesn't get much more lopsided than that.
Kentucky looked good on Wednesday, and now Mark Pope is thinking about how his team can better and how quickly it can happen.
“I don’t spend a lot of time, I don’t spend as much time on outcome,” Pope said. “This sounds very contradictory. I don’t actually know how to explain it but. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what this sheet is going to look like after the game. We spend all our time thinking about what we’re trying to do in the moment, right,” Pope said. “So, you know, I think – of course there’s all the nerves, right. It’s our first time in this building. This is Kentucky and there’s massive expectations and all those things but, you know, I’m really consumed with seeing how fast we can get better. The way we get better is by just being dialed in on exactly what we’re doing. So, I wasn’t really anticipating seeing anything on the stat sheet. I was just curious with how well we can coach our guys to be great decision makers in all the ways that we do it. We’re spending a lot more time thinking about those things. Then this just happens because of what we’re focusing on.”
When Pope played basketball at Kentucky in college, he was part of a national championship winning team. Right now, the Wildcats are in a bit of a drought in terms of postseason success, and that is why there were problems with John Calipari. It's been awhile since Kentucky made a good run in the postseason, and Pope now wants to be able to lead the Wildcats to a championship as a coach.
