Three takeaways from Mark Pope’s press conference previewing Kentucky’s season opener

Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope’s Thursday press conference previewing Monday’s season opener against Wright State.

1. Amari Williams is day-to-day

Pope said that UK starting center Amari Williams is “day-to-day” after leaving the floor holding his leg early in Tuesday night’s exhibition victory over Minnesota State. Williams did return to the bench from the locker room but did not return to action.

Pope said imaging on Williams’ injury was “really good, really positive” and said that the center will be limited for awhile.

“He won’t do anything, you know, just do free throws today,” said the coach. “And we’re hopeful that he’ll be back soon, but we’ll kind of proceed with all the caution and urgency that we possibly can.”

2. Here’s where Pope wants to see early improvement

Despite the blowout exhibition wins over Kentucky Wesleyan and Minnesota State, Pope on Thursday identified some areas he called “super important” where his team needs to improve as quickly as possible.

What are those areas?

“I haven’t been super excited about us on the glass right now,” Pope said. “We haven’t had the presence on the offensive glass that is vitally important. How we play, we have got to have a presence on the offensive glass. And I think there were some times we got lackadaisical on the defensive glass. So I’d like to get much, much better there, much more sure there.”

Pope also mentioned that there were times Tuesday where he felt his team needed to tighten up defensively.

“We talk about early help, early recover all the time. The early help is to get to the early recover,” he said. “And a lot of times we were actually dancing, recovering to the gap instead of recovering to the shooter. And so, you know, that’s really important. That’s a place where we have to grow.”

There are more areas, of course.

“We got a bunch of areas where we’re excited to grow you know,” he said. “I thought we were a little disheveled in terms of kind of getting in the next space in our offense. Our second lifts weren’t great, not only because we were closing the gap down, which we don’t like to do, we like to keep that expanded, but also because sometimes it was nonexistent. Sometimes, you know, again, there was a little fatigue on floor.”

3. A shout-out to George Karl

Kentucky started 2-of-13 shooting from 3-point range on Tuesday but kept right on shooting 3s. Get ready. That’s the way Pope’s teams are going to play.

To that end, Pope was asked how long did it take for him as a coach to feel comfortable with his team continuing to shoot 3-pointers even when they are not falling?

“One of the best basketball minds, or one of the people in basketball that I look up to and admire and learned so much from, was George Karl,” said Pope of the Hall of Fame coach who won over 1,110 games in the NBA. “I got to play for Coach two different times, two different teams. I think, technically, he fired me twice, but Coach had this incredible ability to not be a scoreboard watcher.”

It didn’t matter if his team was winning or his team was losing, Karl was more concerned about the way his team was playing.

“You could go into the second media timeout and it could be 26-11, and everybody’s really fretting, but he’s like, ‘No, no, we’re fine, guys. The energy in this gym is right. We’re actually playing right. Like, everything we’re doing is right. We’re executing. We’re seeing the game. It’s just some things haven’t gone our way, but if we kind of stay on this path were on it’ll be good.”

It would be the same approach if Karl’s team was leading 26-11.

“He’d be like, ‘All right, listen, guys, we’re not right right now. Don’t get tricked by this scoreboard. We just made some ridiculous shots. And this is not quite right.’ I thought he was brilliant at not being a scoreboard watcher, but being an energy reader, and I actually think the game asks us for that. The game is asking us to, don’t be distracted.”

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