As a year of change comes to a close, Mark Pope discusses UK basketball’s win to cap 2024

Kentucky basketball made sure to end 2024 on a high note Tuesday afternoon.

The Wildcats dispatched first-time opponent Brown 88-54 in a New Year’s Eve matinee at Rupp Arena behind a balanced scoring effort and disruptive defensive performance.

Four UK players scored in double figures against Brown. Fifth-year forward Andrew Carr led the way with 14 points, all of which came in the first half. Koby Brea, Otega Oweh and Amari Williams each had 13 points.

Kentucky forced 23 turnovers, which marked the most takeaways in a single game by the Wildcats so far this season. This also marked the most turnovers forced by Kentucky since the Texas A&M had 25 giveaways in January 2017.

On the other end of the ball security spectrum, UK committed a season-low five turnovers against the Bears.

Mark Pope has ended the first two months of his debut season as the Kentucky basketball coach with an 11-2 overall record. The Wildcats, who are ranked No. 10 in this week’s edition of the AP poll, begin the daunting task of an 18-game SEC season on Saturday with a home matchup against undefeated Florida. The Gators (13-0) are ranked No. 6 in the nation.

Until then, and following UK’s win over Brown to ring in the new year, Pope spoke with media members at Rupp Arena to further discuss the end of nonconference play.

Here’s everything that Pope said after Kentucky’s dominant home victory over Brown.

Opening statement

Guys, I took a little bit longer getting out because I’m trying to keep you guys out of the club. I know you guys are headed right to the New Year’s festivities, so I’m trying to keep you safe. This could be a four-hour press conference because I’m keeping the guys in the locker room until we get done. I’m not doing that ...

Congratulations to Brown. Terrific team. They are going to be a really big-time problem in the Ivy League. They have terrific talent. Mike does an unbelievable job of coaching that crew and we have a ton of respect for what they’ve done and already posted huge wins this year including a big-time home win against Rhode Island. They gave Kansas all they could handle for a half. It’s a good team and they have really good kids and they are doing a great job. I was proud of our guys today. I was proud of us kinda ringing the bell defensively.

It was really important to us. Minus some letdowns on the glass, I thought some guys were stellar. It was a season-high in deflections, which is really important for us and our percentage is challenging shots, which is really good, and I think our guys had fun tonight.

I told the guys I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where you get to walk in on New Year’s Eve at 2 o’clock and have every single, 20,500 people packed in there to watch you play, you know, a mid-major team. It’s just incredible. I’m grateful to all of BBN.

Question about Kentucky starting a bit slow against Brown.

... I don’t think I’ve lost going into Christmas. ... This is maybe my first year, I might be wrong. My first year at (Utah Valley) was the last time I lost going into Christmas. This is the worst, it’s miserable. But our guys handled it great. I thought we were brilliant to start the game defensively.

We just turn the ball over three times in the first 90 seconds and from then on the guys’ ball protection was lead, I think we finished with four, did we finish with four or five turnovers? Five turnovers, which I think ties our best or maybe one better than our best this season. They were motivated by aggressiveness.

The first one was Andrew Carr comes up with a huge steal early in the possession and he’s racing down the floor and advances to Jaxson and Jaxson was not looking and kind of got held up. I was actually really proud of how the guys came out. I was really proud of their focus and not swinging too wide on the defensive end. They were really focused and I thought that was great.

Question about how Mark Pope teaches energy with this Kentucky team.

Yeah, I think it’s such an important part of what we do. And it’s something that, you know, that just doesn’t happen. That’s something that you pay a ton of attention to and really focus on. It’s something we do with our guys on an individual level by sending them positive or negative clips at 2 o’clock in the morning. Or putting your arm around them at halftime or laying into them in the locker room after one of the guys falls asleep in the film sessions, that’s never happened with us this season.

And it’s teaching your guys how to cull the energy out of their teammates, right? How do they talk to their teammates, what do they see? It’s no different than anything in life that’s hard and demanding and arduous and full of stress and pressure. You are trying to tap into every possible way to find energy and our guys are good at it. We are pretty good. We are not flawless in that area, but we are pretty good and I think we have a chance to get better.

Question about Kentucky’s ball-screen defense and general defensive tendencies.

I don’t know how we finished. I know at one point we were in the second half at 23 (deflections) and was really good for us to get there in the second half. There was probably, you know we had a couple of days where it was basketball all day long. I think there was probably some points during the last week where all of our guys were struggling to remember if there was anything involved in the game of basketball except for ball-screen defense.

We repped and repped and repped and to our guys credit, they really worked on it. Listen, the greatest players in the world are trying to figure out how to guard ball screens in different scenarios. It’s going to be an ongoing process. I was incredibly proud of our guys the way they managed it and I thought it was an elite and I thought their communication was terrific on the defensive end and when we did make some mistakes on cutters away from the ball screen, I thought our guys did a great job with hands helping each other.

We had one play in particular, actually, I will bring up that was really exciting for me. It was in the second half, early in the second half. One of the things we have been talking about was we try and keep ball screen defense down to two-on-two endeavor as much as we can because we want to stay with shooters and in response to some struggles we’ve had, we’ve been trying to incorporate those other three players to still be with shooters but to be early and help early and recovery and a bunch of different scenarios.

Andrew Carr was on the right side of the floor and the ball screen was happening on the left side of the floor and he actually, it was OKC action, it was a Spain action where it’s a ball screen and back screen and the roll kinda came open a little bit early and Andrew came all the way to tag along the baseline and did it early, was there early and got a little tag. And then raced out to be there on the — with the reflection, almost came up with the steal, like the pick six steal. It would have been a pick two steal, or maybe a pick and one steal, but it’s little moments like that where we are like, OK, we are cooking, we are getting better.

Right? That’s all we care about. Can we get better? And these guys did.

Question about what Mark Pope learned from the lineups that he used against Brown.

Yeah, we are putting different guys together trying to figure out how they feel. We spent a lot of time in practice this week with ... Andrew and BG on the floor together and Ansley and Amari on the floor together. So that mix-up of bigs, I think there is some space to make us look different.

One thing I learned is that TP is going to keep working into these minutes of the points and he’s going to keep getting more and more comfortable. For him right now, he’s got so much more to his game than we are probably seeing in the limited minutes he’s had so far because he is still trying to get over the newness of it. But as he settles in, and he’s going to settle in under fire but as he settles in he’s going to be very, very, very serviceable and to the point. And Collin Chandler has made just an insane amount of progress on the defensive end. It’s brilliant, he was really good defensively tonight and really good off two feet tonight and really good as a playmaker tonight.

And then, Trent Noah, the thing I learned about Trent Noah is he just verified it again is if we ever need a 3, I need to sub him into the game and let him shoot it. He doesn’t need any warm-up time. He’s going to come bang one or two. We are learning a lot about how the guys fit together.

You know, Koby. A lot of kudos defensively. I thought Koby was elite defensively. He did a lot of makeup ability plays tonight where he kind of came and blocked the shot later and stripped somebody late in a ball screen or penetrating rotation, I thought he was really good. Him, we kind of were playing with the numbers for a long time and there were some interesting things we learned about when him and Otega were on the floor together, we were trying to figure out what that means. We are digging into all of it.

Question about Kentucky recording 18 assists against five turnovers against Brown.

It means everything for us. If you look at a lot of numbers on the stat sheet, they are important to us. This turnover, those numbers, they are just a manifestation of if we are playing right on the offensive end. The turnover number is an indication of if we are giving ourselves a chance of guarding on the defensive end. Those two numbers loom large for us and are really important and if we can stay above a 3-to-1 as a team, I would be elated and we have a chance to win a lot of games.

Question about SEC play starting for Kentucky.

Every game, you’re going to walk in and it’s going to feel like a tossup. And I think when you have that, it’s going to so much end up with — what does your teams execution look like? How capable are you communicating on the floor? Executing on the floor? I think its going to come a lot down to resolve. Like how much frustration are you capable of enduring? Where is your emotional reservoir at?

I know that sounds like soft skills but that’s actually defining features of great games. It’s going to have a little bit of an NBA feel where you can’t get too high or too low because you don’t have time to emotionally rehab from letting yourself be devastated or elated. You play the No. 3 team in the country and two days later you going on the road to play the No. 1 team in the country and then you are playing the No. 10 team in the country.

I think it’s going to be a matter of just those two things. Where are you on the execution scale and, you know, where are you on that durability scale, right? And those are going to matter.

Question about Kentucky basketball signees Acaden Lewis and Jasper Johnson being at the Brown game.

... I was hyped. The truth is, I’m the last person to know anything, like I only know a lot about a very few things. I’m in the timeout talking to the staff and I looked up and those two kids are standing out there center court. I got so excited, it was the first time I’ve seen them on the court together and definitely the first time I’ve seen them on the court in Rupp with the joint filled.

I was like, this is going to be so fun. Like not even containable. Those two guys are going to be incredible. They’re going to work some real magic in this building and I can’t wait to get them here on the court in uniform. They are two beautiful, beautiful kids that are really, really talented and great competitors. It’s going to be fun to watch them grow. I’m super excited about those guys.

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