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LEXINGTON — Mark Pope is anything but set in his ways. That's why he's always willing to make adjustments — sometimes on the fly. Owing to his background as a former medical student, Pope and his Kentucky basketball coaching staff perform "autopsies" after every game. In layman's terms, it's film review. What went right, and wrong, in the Wildcats' most recent outing before turning the page. Or, as Pope phrased it during one news conference this year, the reports are "dead and buried" once the "autopsy" is complete.
Yet single games aren't the only time UK's coaches go "under the knife" with the team, so to speak.
During the final radio show of the 2024-25 season, mere days after Tennessee handed Kentucky a one-sided loss in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16, Pope revealed the staff also conducts more extensive reviews of the program beyond the game-to-game assessments.
One occurs after the nonconference portion of the schedule ends and before SEC play begins. The second takes place between the conclusion of the regular season and the start of the league tournament. The final evaluation — a "super extensive" one, at that, per Pope — is held once Kentucky's season has seen its last day.
This "autopsy" doubles as the most important.
It's at this time, with no more games to prepare for, a coaching staff truly can diagnose every part of the program, top to bottom.
"I hope we learn from every experience," Pope said. "I think the complication is, when you get really good at this, what you do is you have pretty good insight on what changes to go wholesale on, what changes to just dip your toe on and where to stay true to the things that are your identity and make you successful."
One tenet Pope will lean on is an explosive offense. (UK ranked among the top 10 in Division I in points per game and were 11th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.com.) Another core philosophy is a reliance on 3-pointers — in volume; though Pope and his staff yearned for the team to attempt 30 (or more) per game, the Wildcats finished at only 25.3 per outing.
Defensively, Pope wanted his team to crash the glass with the best of them. And in terms of defensive rebounding percentage — a metric of a team's effectiveness grabbing an opponent's missed shot — the Wildcats met expectations.
At 74.8%, UK tied for the best figure in the SEC in that category alongside South Carolina.
Yet that ability failed Pope's group at the most inopportune time: March Madness.
The Volunteers pulled down 13 offensive rebounds, tied for third most by any Wildcats' foe in 2024-25.
That tidbit, reinforced via the end-of-season autopsy, proved to Pope that as good as his team was in that department, it wasn't championship level.
"That is a continual process of getting more and more diligent, more and more physical, more and more capable of staying out of rotations so we can block out," he said.
It's not the only thing UT exposed, either.
"Tennessee did an unbelievable job of handling our cut game, and we have to be more physical there," Pope said. "We've actually toyed with the idea of kind of installing, in one half of our court this summer, these blocking dummies that football players run through, just to get our guys used to the physicality of doing it and making change-of-direction cuts.
"So I'll be working with Coach Stoops on that, see if we can make that happen," Pope continued, referring to longtime Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops. "But all of that's a real part of getting better, and it's learning the league and it's understanding ways where we can get closer to our ceiling."
The willingness to adapt extends beyond in-game strategy and concepts to the foundation of the program: constructing the roster.
Pope reflected upon the past year.
Upon his hire, he didn't inherit a single player. All 12 scholarship members of the 2023-24 club had fled, either to the NBA draft or transfer portal. Pope and his staff quickly sketched out the roster they hoped to design.
Then reality set in.
The roster they assembled wasn't necessarily what they had at their disposal, as injuries decimated the Wildcats all season. (For context: Kentucky had its full complement of scholarship players available for just seven games in 2024-25; less than 20% of its 36-game season.)
UK is using that juxtaposition — the roster the staff created versus the roster that actually played — as it begins preparations for Year 2 of Pope's tenure.
"There were a lot of things that I think we got really, really, really right," Pope said. "So just trying to make those nuanced decisions about changes we make is probably the beautiful, artistic part of roster construction, and it's really fun. You just tease out scenario after scenario after scenario, and as we go through, every coaching staff in America is just going down a list of players and watching video and checking numbers and doing deep dives into analytics and background."
Few coaches love the numbers more than Pope.
Even that has its limits, however.
"Every player is a different human being. It's hard to put them in a box," he said. "So, considering all those different aspects and then putting them into a team — one of the fun things that we really learned last year that's going to certainly (be) very true this year is every single time we add a piece, it changes the dynamics of the next piece we'd be looking for.
"It's not like we can do cookie-cutter pieces into the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (positions) right? If I find my way into a 5 that's got a certain, unique skillset, it's going to change very much who I could play at the 4 and what I look for in a backup 5."
The search for the perfect formula — a roster in harmony — never stops.
"I hope we're taking all of the information and experience and data that we learned … and that's having some impact on our decision making, otherwise it'd be a waste, right?" Pope said. "So it's pretty fun that way."
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Mark Pope: UK coach breaks down what works, what didn't in Year 1
Continue reading...
Yet single games aren't the only time UK's coaches go "under the knife" with the team, so to speak.
During the final radio show of the 2024-25 season, mere days after Tennessee handed Kentucky a one-sided loss in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16, Pope revealed the staff also conducts more extensive reviews of the program beyond the game-to-game assessments.
One occurs after the nonconference portion of the schedule ends and before SEC play begins. The second takes place between the conclusion of the regular season and the start of the league tournament. The final evaluation — a "super extensive" one, at that, per Pope — is held once Kentucky's season has seen its last day.
This "autopsy" doubles as the most important.
It's at this time, with no more games to prepare for, a coaching staff truly can diagnose every part of the program, top to bottom.
"I hope we learn from every experience," Pope said. "I think the complication is, when you get really good at this, what you do is you have pretty good insight on what changes to go wholesale on, what changes to just dip your toe on and where to stay true to the things that are your identity and make you successful."
One tenet Pope will lean on is an explosive offense. (UK ranked among the top 10 in Division I in points per game and were 11th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.com.) Another core philosophy is a reliance on 3-pointers — in volume; though Pope and his staff yearned for the team to attempt 30 (or more) per game, the Wildcats finished at only 25.3 per outing.
Defensively, Pope wanted his team to crash the glass with the best of them. And in terms of defensive rebounding percentage — a metric of a team's effectiveness grabbing an opponent's missed shot — the Wildcats met expectations.
At 74.8%, UK tied for the best figure in the SEC in that category alongside South Carolina.
Yet that ability failed Pope's group at the most inopportune time: March Madness.
The Volunteers pulled down 13 offensive rebounds, tied for third most by any Wildcats' foe in 2024-25.
That tidbit, reinforced via the end-of-season autopsy, proved to Pope that as good as his team was in that department, it wasn't championship level.
"That is a continual process of getting more and more diligent, more and more physical, more and more capable of staying out of rotations so we can block out," he said.
It's not the only thing UT exposed, either.
"Tennessee did an unbelievable job of handling our cut game, and we have to be more physical there," Pope said. "We've actually toyed with the idea of kind of installing, in one half of our court this summer, these blocking dummies that football players run through, just to get our guys used to the physicality of doing it and making change-of-direction cuts.
"So I'll be working with Coach Stoops on that, see if we can make that happen," Pope continued, referring to longtime Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops. "But all of that's a real part of getting better, and it's learning the league and it's understanding ways where we can get closer to our ceiling."
The willingness to adapt extends beyond in-game strategy and concepts to the foundation of the program: constructing the roster.
Pope reflected upon the past year.
Upon his hire, he didn't inherit a single player. All 12 scholarship members of the 2023-24 club had fled, either to the NBA draft or transfer portal. Pope and his staff quickly sketched out the roster they hoped to design.
Then reality set in.
The roster they assembled wasn't necessarily what they had at their disposal, as injuries decimated the Wildcats all season. (For context: Kentucky had its full complement of scholarship players available for just seven games in 2024-25; less than 20% of its 36-game season.)
UK is using that juxtaposition — the roster the staff created versus the roster that actually played — as it begins preparations for Year 2 of Pope's tenure.
"There were a lot of things that I think we got really, really, really right," Pope said. "So just trying to make those nuanced decisions about changes we make is probably the beautiful, artistic part of roster construction, and it's really fun. You just tease out scenario after scenario after scenario, and as we go through, every coaching staff in America is just going down a list of players and watching video and checking numbers and doing deep dives into analytics and background."
Few coaches love the numbers more than Pope.
Even that has its limits, however.
"Every player is a different human being. It's hard to put them in a box," he said. "So, considering all those different aspects and then putting them into a team — one of the fun things that we really learned last year that's going to certainly (be) very true this year is every single time we add a piece, it changes the dynamics of the next piece we'd be looking for.
"It's not like we can do cookie-cutter pieces into the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (positions) right? If I find my way into a 5 that's got a certain, unique skillset, it's going to change very much who I could play at the 4 and what I look for in a backup 5."
The search for the perfect formula — a roster in harmony — never stops.
"I hope we're taking all of the information and experience and data that we learned … and that's having some impact on our decision making, otherwise it'd be a waste, right?" Pope said. "So it's pretty fun that way."
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Mark Pope: UK coach breaks down what works, what didn't in Year 1
Continue reading...
