‘A really tough lesson for us.’ Mark Pope discusses UK basketball’s loss at Vanderbilt

Kentucky men’s basketball has suffered another setback in SEC play.

On Saturday afternoon — and fresh from a week off from games — No. 9 UK fell 74-69 at Vanderbilt. The Wildcats battled back from a 14-point halftime deficit to take a seven-point lead with 8:39 to play, but head coach Mark Pope’s team faltered down the stretch.

UK didn’t score in the final 2:56 of the game. Vanderbilt went on a 6-0 scoring run to close the game and turn a one-point deficit into a five-point home win. “Memorial Magic” is certainly back for the Commodores, who have now beaten No. 6 Tennessee and No. 9 Kentucky in their last two home games at Memorial Gym in Nashville.

This is the first time in Pope’s UK coaching tenure that the Wildcats have lost consecutive games.

Kentucky was led by junior guard Otega Oweh, who had a game-high 21 points to go along with a career-best 12 rebounds. This was the second double-double of Oweh’s college career, and his first as a UK player.

Only senior forward Ansley Almonor (12 points on 4-for-5 shooting on 3-pointers) and fifth-year guard Jaxson Robinson (11 points) joined Oweh in double figures in scoring.

Turnovers were a particular struggle for the Wildcats. Kentucky committed 17 turnovers, with six charged to fifth-year guard Lamont Butler and four each attributed to Oweh and sophomore forward Brandon Garrison. Butler’s six turnovers tied both his season and career highs for giveaways.

Those 17 turnovers by UK led to 14 Vanderbilt points. UK also only had 11 assists. This is the third time this season that Kentucky has recorded more turnovers than assists in a game. It also happened in road losses at Clemson and Georgia.

The Wildcats played for the first time this season without fifth-year forward Andrew Carr, who was ruled out for the game on the SEC injury report due to a lingering back injury. Almonor took Carr’s spot in the UK starting lineup.

After the game, Pope met with reporters in Nashville to discuss the defeat. UK will next play at No. 6 Tennessee on Tuesday night in Knoxville.

Here’s everything Pope said after losing to Vandy.

Opening statement

… (Vanderbilt) made big plays when they had to. They exerted a ton of pressure on us all game long, which is what they do. They turned us over 17 times, which is one of the things they do best.

They had guys step up and make big shots in a great environment. We were really disappointed with how we performed for parts of the game. And I was really proud of our guys for parts of the game. And we’re just hungry to get better.

Question about a common theme behind Kentucky’s 17 turnovers.

They did a good job getting us on our heels. It’s super disappointing. This is a style of play that we love for teams to play. It’s a part of the game where, when we’re at our best offensively, and for a bunch of reasons — (some) reasons that I know and some reasons that I don’t — man, we were just heavy on our heels and credit to Vanderbilt, of course.

But it’s a really tough lesson for us, for our guys … But yes, it was due to their pressure, for sure.

Question about Kentucky falling behind in first halves and needing to go on big scoring runs in second halves.

We haven’t started slow, it’s that second 10 minutes of the first half that’s plagued us a little bit. I think we get a little fatigued … Our bench is a little bit disintegrated. So we’ve got some fatigue out there.

That’s an issue … Credit to Vanderbilt for turning up the heat. Kind of in the flow of the game, we were really solid with (Vanderbilt guard Jason Edwards) going early, aside from that we were really solid both ends of the floor. The game had a flow to it, and then we started getting punished a little bit on the offensive glass. Disappointing that that happened.

And then, their pressure kind of kicked in. The second 10 minutes of the first half was a debacle.

But I wasn’t disappointed with how our guys started. I was good focus … I wish we had an answer to (Edwards) earlier, but still the flow of the game was okay.

Question about the concern level for UK with three SEC losses.

Yeah, I mean everybody’s really good defensively, right? That’s the great thing about this league. It’s such a fun, beautiful league. Every night is going to be the biggest challenge of your season.

It’s nice because you don’t actually have to convince your guys of that, it’s just every single game. I think every team is probably feeling some fatigue and frustration, and everyone’s is dealing with injuries, for sure.

We’re not far away. We have some real issues that we have to find some creative answers to, but we’re not far away. We did some really positive things tonight. Some things I was really proud of our guys (for).

In that, we took some calculated guesses at how we could sure up some space of the floor and Vanderbilt answered really well … They’re capable of doing that (making 3-pointers), but I don’t think they’ve done it before.

And that’s nice, you need to make teams do stuff they don’t commonly do, and they rung the bell in that space, for sure.

Question about how Andrew Carr’s absence impacted the UK offense.

It doesn’t. We have really good players. I thought Ansley was terrific tonight and I thought (Trent) Noah gave us a real burst. So, we have players good enough to win. Our team wasn’t good enough to win tonight.

Question about Trent Noah’s performance.

I thought he was great on the glass. I thought his energy was really good tonight. And we need that. We’re kind of patch-working this together, but I’m looking out there with six minutes left and I’m just riding Otega (Oweh) and Jax (Jaxson Robinson) and Lamont (Butler) is dealing with all kinds of stuff right now.

Those guys are fighting like crazy and they’re exhausted, right? I thought Trent Noah was great tonight and we have a lot of confidence in him and he had a big impact on the game in a really positive way.

And he’ll continue to do that. He made some mistakes that you’re going to expect from rookies. But he’s going to be a good player.

Question about Lamont Butler.

Yeah, I mean Lamont. He’s got a lot right now. We all know what a warrior he is. He is giving us everything he’s got right now.

It’s hard for him, physically, right now.

Question about Kentucky making positive improvements in not fouling and not allowing too many offensive rebounds.

That’s the good thing about this league, it’s going to challenge you in different ways every night. The biggest challenge tonight for us was just, we gave them the ball. We just kept giving them the ball. Which, (we’re) one of the top ball protection teams in the country …

There’s some spaces in the game where you feel like you have some confidence where you’ve kind of proven yourselves. But, when you start leaking there the game gets super hard. But I was really proud of our guys for adjusting some other things.

And Vanderbilt made us pay, for our dedication to try and keep this team off the (foul) line and handle them in transition and handle their penetration. You’re going to give up some things, and they answered the bell by going to those things and those guys delivered in big moments.

Question about if there’s any worry about SEC basketball teams cannibalizing each other ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

No. No, I think it makes us better. I would choose this league, the way it is this year, every single year.

It can rip you to pieces, for sure. But our job is to keep finding a way to get better. I have a really good locker room of guys that are going to keep focusing on getting better. We’re not going to lose our confidence. We’re not going to question each other. We’re not going to doubt what we’re doing.

We’re just going to use all these experiences to get better, and there’s really specific things that we talk about to our guys all the time. But our guys actually experiencing it together as a team, today, for the first time, where they’re like, ‘Oh, those words actually mean something. And it’s really painful if we don’t actually do that.’

So it makes us a better team. I’m not worried about that at all. I think we’re really blessed to be facing this competition every game.

Question about Andrew Carr’s injury status after not playing.

I’ve probably done a bad job with Drew. He wants to play so bad and we were just kind of seeing a decline in his performance because there’s just so much he can’t do with his back.

We were trending the wrong direction. Injuries are hard. These calls are really hard. What we’re hoping is that we can get to a space sometime in the next few weeks, the next few days, somewhere where we have enough confidence. He hasn’t practiced in a couple weeks.

And every game it’s kind of like, he just gets beat up so bad it’s back to square one, where it’s hard for him to walk essentially. So, we’re hoping that with more time we can get him to some sustainable place where he can endure a practice and endure a game and not be back to zero.

But, we’ll see if that actually happens. It’s complicated. You’re dealing in percentages. You’re not dealing in guarantees. We just thought we’d take a swing at this and we’ll kind of gauge him tomorrow and gauge him Monday …

Day-by-day with him, for sure.

Question about getting all three freshman — Travis Perry, Collin Chandler and Trent Noah — playing time.

I think they’re really capable guys. We desperately need their minutes. We need their minutes to be really quality. They’re fully capable. It’s also growing. Growing is always painful, so.

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