With Kentucky’s victory over Louisville, Mark Pope erases three decades of torment

On the eve of the first time Mark Pope would coach his college alma mater against its intrastate archrival, the new Kentucky head man decided to do a little historical research.

Along with his wife, Lee Anne, Pope looked up the box score from his first game against Louisville as a UK player.

“You guys know, I have a terrible memory,” Pope said. “So I looked up the two games I actually played in (vs. U of L).”

In so doing, Pope unlocked repressed trauma he had been carrying for three decades associated with his first Cats-Cards game as a player.

On New Year’s Day in 1995, Pope and UK took an 88-86 loss to U of L at Freedom Hall. It is a game best remembered for the triple-double — 14 points, 10 rebounds, 11 blocked shots — produced by Louisville big man Samaki Walker.

Pope had nine points and 10 rebounds but missed six shots from the floor and two free throws.

For Pope, digging into the stats from that game unleashed a torrent of memories from the bus ride home to Lexington after that loss with a steaming Rick Pitino.

“I was in a full-on, teary-eyed sweat last night,” Pope said Saturday. “I had blocked it out of any memory. Then, all of a sudden, it started coming back. I’m starting to cold sweat right now.”

Fortunately for Pope, his recollections of his first Kentucky-Louisville game as the top Cat will be a bit more pleasant.

Behind a career performance from point guard Lamont Butler and some late clutch play from junior wing Otega Oweh, No. 5 Kentucky dispatched the plucky Cardinals 93-85 Saturday before 21,093 fans at Rupp Arena.

Butler’s playing status had been unclear in the run-up to the game due to an ankle injury that knocked him out of UK’s prior two contests. Not only did the San Diego State transfer go against The Ville, he hit all 10 of his shots from the field, six of them 3-pointers, and scored a career-high 33 points.

With Kentucky (10-1) clinging to a 79-74 advantage late, Oweh scored eight of the Wildcats’ 10 points in between the 1:58 and 43.6 seconds marks to close out the Cardinals (6-5). The transfer from Oklahoma — who also came up huge late in UK’s 77-72 win over Duke in the Champions Classic — finished with 17 points.

That made Pope the winner in the “rivalry reset” game that saw both the UK head man and new Louisville coach Pat Kelsey making their coaching debuts in our state’s marquee hoops grudgefest.

“Incredibly proud of our guys,” Pope said. “It was a classic rivalry game. Hats off to Louisville. Those guys are playing so hard right now, shorthanded. Pat is doing a phenomenal job coaching that group.”

Said Kelsey: “I want to give Kentucky credit: They played a great game, great college atmosphere. I thought it was a great college game.”

After Pope was the choice of UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart to replace the departed John Calipari as Kentucky coach last spring, the former Wildcats big man has spoken often of his first few days on the job, when he was essentially the only employee working in the Wildcats’ men’s basketball office.

At that time, Pope literally had a roster without a returning scholarship player.

From that start, it has taken Pope all of 11 games to compile wins over Duke, Gonzaga and Louisville while elevating UK into the top five in the AP men’s college hoops poll.

“We’re still learning how to do it,” Pope said. “Our ceiling is so much higher right now in terms of how we play.”

The new UK-U of L coaching matchup yielded a very familiar result. Kentucky has now beaten Louisville in 10 of the past 12 meetings and 17 of the last 22. UK leads all-time series with U of L 40-17, and the modern series (since 1982-83) 31-14.

Though Cardinals backers have surely had their fill of taking “L’s” (down) against Kentucky, there was much to be encouraged about in how Kelsey’s team performed in the Cards’ head man’s first taste of the UK-U of L rivalry.

Louisville point guard Chucky Hepburn was almost as good as UK’s Butler. A transfer from Wisconsin, Hepburn went for 26 points, five rebounds and five assists. Wing Terrence Edwards Jr., a former star at James Madison, came off the U of L bench to score 23.

Kelsey’s coaching acumen was such, the Cardinals scored baskets out of timeouts on four straight occasions in the second half.

“I think it’s one of the really cool rivalries in all of American sports,” Kelsey said afterward of UK-U of L. “We have to do our part and win some to continue to make it a rivalry.”

Still, this was Pope’s night. All that work last spring in the transfer portal has produced a Kentucky team that is mature, resourceful and, so far, really hard to beat.

One of the most important responsibilities of a college head coach is to beat the teams his fans most want to beat.

Pope not only achieved that against Louisville, he managed to find an outlet for the distress he had been repressing for 30 years following his first game against U of L as a player.

Sharing with the assembled media the memory of that bus ride with a fuming Pitino, Pope shook his head.

“You get locked in a bus with Coach P for an hour and a half after a two-point loss against Louisville, I wouldn’t wish that on any of you,” the new Kentucky coach said. “I bet only half you guys would come out alive.”

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