Mark Pope and Wildcats recap win over Wright State

A promising Game 1 of the Mark Pope era.

The Kentucky Wildcats are 1-0 to begin the Mark Pope era following a 103-63 victory over the Wright State Raiders.

Following the game, Pope and several players met with the media to discuss the Cats’ regular-season opener.

Here’s a recap of what they had to say via UK Athletics.

MARK POPE: Does this seat feel super short? Can you guys see me? All right. I like it. I feel smaller. Super. Really proud of our guys. I thought they came out like I would hope they would. They were so intentional to start the game. They seemed very, very – you know, we always talk with our team about kind of operating their frontal cortex and not their limbic system. Sometimes that’s a really important balance. These guys certainly did that well. They had exactly the right kind of makeup to start the game. I’m proud of them. So, great game. Terrific Wright State team. Clint is one of the great young up-and-coming coaches in college basketball and is going to be really fun to watch his trajectory. They are going to be a good team.

Q Mark, you talked about Otega’s improved decision-making a couple of weeks ago. What was the process there? Is that something you challenged him to do or was that something you saw in him that he could do differently at the beginning?

MARK POPE: Yes, He’s – it’s interesting. As a player, there’s always this process about limiting your game just a little bit, just slightly, so that your game can expand massively. That process takes a ton of trust. Coach Fox has done an unbelievable job mentoring Otega. He spends a lot of time with Otega and Otega has done an unbelievable job trusting and being receptive. He’s simplified his game just a little bit in just a couple very specific areas and he’s become a brilliant decision-maker. Tonight he was incredible defensively. He shot the ball really well and he was great downhill and pretty good in every facet of the game. He was really electric and extraordinary on the defensive end against a terrific and tough match up most of the night.

Q Mark, you talked a lot about earning your shots earlier. Is a game where you have 30 assists with 39 baskets is that a good indicator you done it about as well as you can or not?

MARK POPE: We got a little enamored with, we just got a little overanxious with some homerun stuff. There is, you know there’s always a balance. You’re always living in the tension of letting the game – letting your work on the game work for you back. I know I’m talking 30,000-foot level here. It’s very much a feel. I thought for the most part tonight our guys were pretty intensive. Defensively our defense turned into a bunch of offense tonight. And guys have plays where they were really focused on making a play for the teammate which was special and also really good decision-making once they got downhill. And still, there is room for us to grow. We can be more consistent with being really really forceful in this game but also letting the ball find the open man. There are probably 10 to 15 possessions where we could be much better in that category. So it was both. The numbers are good. Listen, if you give me a 37 game, I’m pretty excited about that for sure. If we do that all year long it would be the all-time record of the history of the world. I would like to do that.

Q Mark, this was the game a lot of people have been waiting for since you were introduced back in April. For you to balance finally getting that first win as a Kentucky head coach, also maybe getting it out of the way and getting the season going. What was that like?

MARK POPE: They asked me this on TV postgame and I’m just going to give you bad answers. We are just lost in the game. At some point, Leanne and I are going to find some quiet moment and sit back and drink a soda sometime in the next month or two or nine months or sometime. We are just going to – I just look forward to that moment and we will really take it in then. It’s so deeply special to me. But right now, you know, we’ve got work to do. We are pretty locked in on the game.

Q Mark, back here. Obviously getting a stop is going to jumpstart your offense way more than obviously than scoring a basketball. For you to get that many steals and blocks, that just jumpstarts it. Getting those steals. Lamont is all over the place. How big is that just to get everything going for you guys?

MARK POPE: It’s really important. You are right. Both of those things are really important. Otega came up with some really timely stops and steals. Lamont, of course, is just a menace out there all the time. He’s always such a threat. It’s almost like, I’ve been the opposing coach going against Lamont Butler and every time you bounce the ball as a coach you kind of hold your breath and say – he didn’t take the ball that time. That’s a win, right? Those two guys could be devastating. I thought especially Otega had a really good special night defensively. That disruptive part of the game was great. I think we haven’t even begun to like touch where we can be as a rim protecting team. I think we have so much more in the tank there that will add to our defense. I thought our guys, we tried to throw some simple changing defenses, take some punches out there, and I thought our guys responded pretty well. We’ve got to clean up our deuce a little bit. We are giving up the middle catch too easily, there are some things like that we can get better at. But certainly our defense. We get energy out of our defense and that’s really important for a team who has offensive minded for us to have a defensive identity where we feel real pride and energy. That’s going to be important for us all season long.

Q Mark, we talk about Amari Williams and his defense but how important is it when he gets that rebound and starts heading up the floor to keep the pace going moving the ball. Passing ability just to keep that pace that you like going, fast going?

MARK POPE: Tell me the truth. You all get excited when he’s racing down the floor with the ball in his hands? Does he? That’s like 400 pounds of solid steel just racing down the floor an amazing clip. Really, none of us know what’s going to happen. It’s fantastic. And he loves it. You know, he made the play where he hit the trail and raced down the floor and gave Kerr the eyes sign. Just to kind of run it back at him. Amari is a really special player and I thought he was terrific. He missed last game and only played a couple of minutes last game with a little patella injury and he missed a couple of days of practice and just really the first time gave us some live stuff yesterday and I thought he responded great and I thought he was terrific tonight. He got a little gassed in the game but I thought he was really good. He’s really important to what we do. When you have Bigs that can grab a rebound or block a shot and lead out in the break, it’s pretty spectacular. It makes you really dangerous defensively because you end up with every mismatch in transition you could possibly want. He is really talented. We are going to need him to do that more and more all season long. It’s a great skill set.

Q Mark, back here. It’s funny that that’s who you asked about because I was going to ask about Amari as well. I was going to specifically ask we do hear so much about his physicality and the way he passes the ball. Is it the most under rated skill takt he can dribble. The one offensive rebound you got in the first half. He got it and kept it and finished off to the rim.

MARK POPE: If you asked him he would say he’s got incredible handles. What he does is he’s got really good handles. He’s got really good vision. He’s got great athleticism. He plays till the end of the play. I’m telling you, there’s just not a lot of guys his size with his skill set. There’s just not. In fact, I don’t know if there is any that are exactly his size and skill set. I’m grateful we have him. He’s also, hopefully all of you guys will get time to sit down with him. He’s one of the best human beings in the world. He’s representing Nottingham, England in an extraordinary way as a player and even more as a person. He’s really special.

Q Mark, there were always legendary stories about your conditioning sessions under Coach P and who knows how many of those are true or exaggerated. But what was the challenge getting the –

MARK POPE: They are true. It would be impossible to exaggerate them. Keep going.

Q Was there a challenge in getting these guys prepared from the summer and into the fall to go as hard as you want to go?

MARK POPE: Yeah. It’s really interesting for us. We were playing with a lot of stuff. We are always playing with health. This is the healthiest I’ve had a team at this point in the season. Actually, this is the healthiest of any team I’ve had in my decade-long head-coaching, give or take a year or two. And we’ve been really meticulous. Coach P would just be, I mean, I think he came to our practice and I don’t think he would ever come back. He was like, you’re so soft. But we are being meticulous. We are measuring everything through catapult. We are measuring our player load and their active load and running load and their dynamic load and we are trying to map it out and plan it out. Randy Towner was with the Bucks for the last two years. Brandon Wells is the best trainer I’ve ever been around. Those two guys lead out in our performance team. We are being incredibly meticulous actually with how we are trying to grow our guys conditioning. It is very different than what I have experienced. We still have a long way to go to get in shape and play the way we want to play. Fortunately, we are going to lean on our depth right now until our conditioning really catches up. We are trying to do that one step at a time so we don’t have too acute uphill trajectory in terms of our conditioning growth. It’s really important. These numbers, I get a headache every morning when Randy and Brandon come in and present to me every morning. It’s a lot of numbers.

Q Mark, along those lines, do you envision playing 10 guys this much throughout the season or do you narrow it down? If you do narrow it down, how difficult of a decision is that going to be?

MARK POPE: I would be really blessed to keep those 10 guys healthy. Listen, there is real space in there. Travis Perry is a real good basketball player and Trent Noah is a really, really good basketball player and those guys can win also. And Walker horn is also going to be mad that I left him off the list. So, Walker Horn is also a really good – shout out to Walker. And so if we can stay healthy, I would like to just keep coming in waves. As much as we can. There’s times when the game is not going to allow that but I would like to keep coming in waves. I think it’s hard and really challenging with the opponents we have. It’s interesting. Our guys, they all fit the way we play but we really have 12 guys with very unique skill sets. And so every time someone new rolls onto the court it’s like oh, we’ve got a new little toolkit we can work with and as a coach it’s such a blessing and allows us to be really creative. The game normally makes you constrict to eight or nine. Sometimes seven or eight. I would like to live in this 10 space as long as the game will let us.

Q Mark, I know it’s early. You don’t appear to be somebody who screams at the referees constantly riding them about this or that. What is your philosophy on that and what are the conversations like that you do have with officials?

MARK POPE: I’m thinking right now.

I started – man, maybe 10 years ago. Maybe eight years ago. Started going to the referee symposium. The West Coast referees. It’s like two days and they sit in a room and they watch some of the most difficult clips they’ve faced from the last season preparing as their training session. You sit there and you watch a block charge called, for example the low hanging fruit example. They will watch it slow motion, watch it five times, watch it 10 times. They will take a poll on whether it was a block or charge. Invariably 150 people would raise their hand and say it was a block and 149 people, referees, these are usually the best referees in the world would call and say it’s a charge. For me, I’m going to – and sometimes I lose my mind. I got a couple of T’s last year but for me I want our players to feel the same way that I do. Is that the referees actually have no power over whether we win or lose the game. The calls are really hard. If I can be disciplined and keep my focus on the game, I think it helps our players be disciplined and help their focus on the game. From the refs. What we’ve done is all had a serious meeting with all the players and all the staff and we just agree that we are going to let Leanne handle the refs and we will just work on the game.

Q Going back to the steals. You guys had 36 points off fast breaks tonight and 18 came off of turnovers. How reassuring is it even this early in the year to see your team not only get those takeaways but be able to throw it in transition and finish the job?

MARK POPE: We left some on the table too. I know Lamont had a couple he wanted to take back. Defense creating offense is really important for us. Listen, Wright State is a terrific offensive team. Like I said, the numbers bear it out. They are really talented offensively. They’ve added a couple of pieces that are good. And they are a talented offensive team. For us to have a consistent concerted effort for most of the game and to be able to be disruptive is going to be really important to us. The fact that we have some guys we can put out and you just guard your guy and we will scheme out the other four offensive players on the floor or scheme out the other three guys, it’s such a luxury as a coach. When you can be like, Lamont, You just go handle that. Wright State has a lot of complicated ball screen actions, high ball screens, they would do a butt ball screen and then rifle back. They will force you to be in a pick and pop situation which is really tough for the way we guard. They will reject a lot and get downhill and come off, you know, zoom action and then reset in a high ball screen really quick or flat screen or butt screen and they get a lot of different things. When you can be like, he Lamont, you just handle all of these ball screens and let me figure out the rest of the game. It’s pretty great its a real great gift and that’s going to be important going forward because I’m not that smart of a coach.

Q Coach, you talk about the special moment playing Travis Perry and Trent Noah tonight being both from Kentucky?

MARK POPE: Listen. Travis Perry and Trent Noah are from Kentucky. They are great basketball players. That’s probably the headline. They are terrific basketball players. They are freshmen playing at the University of Kentucky making big-time plays. I am so impressed with these two young men. I’m telling you guys. The time is not going to be far away. It could be in a week, a day, a month, a year when these guys are going to be headliner guys on this team. They are terrific basketball players. They are like sieves. They are picking up stuff and learning stuff and they are tough as nails. I suspect that neither one of those guys would ever miss a single rep ever in their entire career at the University of Kentucky. We are blessed to have those two kids and they are really special and going to represent Kentucky great. We are really blessed.

Q I don’t know if it hit you that it was a 41 point victory? Kind of crazy?

MARK POPE: That’s what I was telling these guys. Our guys. I’m pretty sure they cooked that up. We talked about that after the game. 41 is really special to me. That is really sweet. Kentucky magic. None like it. Thanks guys.

#00, Otega Oweh

On how the first official win feels…

“It feels great. We have been working so hard for this and to go out there and play for the BBN is huge. We want to show off for the school.”

On if it feels different being a real game where it counts…

“It does. Just knowing that we won [the first regular season game] feels good. I mean the atmosphere was crazy, like the pregame was a little different. You heard booms and stuff like that, so it just feels different for sure.”

On celebrating with coach Pope after first game of Pope era…

“It was huge. I know you saw his suit might be a little damp. It was big time. We enjoyed it.”

#22, Amari Williams

On how the defense turns to offense…

“It helps a lot. You’ve seen it the last couple games with Lamont (Butler) and tonight was Otega (Oweh). He got a couple great steals and one that was going on the run so just seeing him shut it down changed the game on the inside. It’s great that we have players like that that can do it.”

On 30 assists and unselfishness…

“Yeah, that’s the whole point of this offense, being unselfish. We have great shooters. Every time a great shooter has an open shot and passes it to another shooter, knowing that no one has that ego and makes unselfish plays, it is great. It helps our teamwork.”

On the atmosphere…

“It surprises me every night we have a game. Even those loud bangs before the game caught a lot of us by surprise and kind of scared us. But it was a great atmosphere for sure.”

#4, Koby Brea

On the feeling behind his 3 pointers…

“That’s what everyone is talking about in the locker rooms. Sometimes it just happens throughout the season. I told them that I don’t really plan on doing that stuff but sometimes it just happens and it gets the crowd going a little bit”

On being the top 3-pointer leader in the division and having a team that shoots as well as he does…

“I have not experienced anything like this before, because I got two wide open shots. It is the biggest blessing, and we have other guys who can do it too. That is a blessing behind this team!”

On playing for a team where the forwards are good passers…

“That is big time, really. Especially for the way we played. Our big guys are like our second point guards. Everyone has seen Amari do it and now y’all get to see [Brandon Garrison] doing it too. I am glad that they get to showcase what they are going to do.”