Yahoo Sports UK basketball won an action-packed rivalry game vs. Louisville. Mark Pope unpacks it all.
In so many ways, the Kentucky vs. Louisville men’s basketball rivalry is back.
The end result of Saturday’s annual meeting between the Cats and Cardinals remained the same as it has in recent years, but the path to an eventual UK win was exhilarating to say the least.
Head coach Mark Pope’s Wildcats pulled out a 93-85 victory at Rupp Arena over Pat Kelsey’s Cardinals thanks to a special offensive night from fifth-year guard Lamont Butler.
The former San Diego State standout scored a career-high 33 points in the win, with a career-best six made 3-pointers. Butler shot a perfect 10-for-10 from the field in the win.
This all came in Butler’s first appearance following a two-game absence due to a right ankle injury.
UK enjoyed a 24-4 advantage in fast break points over Louisville and shot a blistering 52.4% from 3-point range, powered by Butler’s performance.
Kentucky has now won eight straight games in Rupp Arena over U of L, and six of the last seven games in the series overall. UK leads the all-time series over Louisville, 40-17.
After the game, Pope reflected on Butler’s scintillating scoring night, as well as the emotions that came during, and after, his first win as the UK head coach over U of L.
Now 10-1 on the season, the No. 5-ranked Wildcats are off until a game next Saturday against Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic in New York City.
Here’s everything Pope said following the rivalry win over Louisville.
Opening statement.
I’m incredibly proud of our guys. It was a classic rivalry game. Louisville, hats off to them. I mean those guys are playing so hard right now and doing it shorthanded and Pat is doing an unbelievable job coaching that group and they got a ton of fight and a ton of heart and leadership and seniority and they had guys making big plays and making shots, which they haven’t done as much lately and they should be super proud.
And our guys just kept fighting and got the win. Couldn’t be happier for our guys.
Question about Lamont Butler.
First of all, I was joking with the guys after on the way off the floor. Lamont’s agent called me and said OK, he’s only playing every 10 days and he’s taking the rest of the time off. Unbelievable credit to him. My goodness, what an incredible, I mean Lamont Butler just gave us one of the all-time greatest performances in the history of this super special game. Like, of all time. The numbers back it up. The way he came into it backs it up. And you think about when you go out and you are trying to recruit and our guys, our staff is so good and those guys identify a winner, then this is what you get from him, right?
I’m so proud of him and major credit-major credit. Looking at my performance team side-eyed for the last 10 days. I’m telling you, this Brandon Wells is probably the best in the entire business. He’s incredible. And for Randy to have limited access but to be creative enough to keep Lamont in playing condition without him being able to set foot on his ankle for a week is really remarkable. You know, we weren’t proceeding with caution, we weren’t just holding him out of game play because we wanted him to get a bunch of practice under his belt. He really hasn’t done anything.
Everything has been auxiliary. We are blessed at Kentucky to have two the best guys in the whole business doing it. It’s a real credit to Lamont. His heart, it’s a real credit to Brandon and Randy. What an unbelievable team they were. So, hats off to those guys.
Question about Mark Pope nicknaming a mole in his backyard “The Cardinal” earlier this fall.
Well, one mole down, one to go guys. That one in the backyard is a little more pesky, it’s a problem. That is really frustrating, but we will work on it. My guys know it. It’s an honor to a be part of this great game. It’s really special to be able to kind of put their name in the book and imprint it. It had everything that you would expect of this game, it was really special.
Question about how Kentucky handles segments of the game when Lamont Butler isn’t playing.
Well, the first time I checked him out, we turned it over in the back court for a lay-up, that wasn’t great. After that, I haven’t even looked at (Travis Perry’s) minutes. TP played 6 minutes and 42 seconds. They were probably like 17-second stints. Basically, he was great. He kind of kept it under control and was really solid defensively and had some makeup ability.
The staff has worked really hard and figuring out rotation. Who we can have in the game when Lamont is out right now? I thought our guys were great. It’s important, I mean, I’m not sure if our design is to have Lamont playing 32 every night. But he did it tonight and the other eight worked.
Question about the air of politeness that seems to surround the new era of the Kentucky vs. Louisville rivalry with Mark Pope and Pat Kelsey.
I think that you have two veteran groups that are pretty focused on the way they compete the best, the way they give themselves the best chance to win. It is to be laser focused on the job at hand and be super disciplined about not letting the emotion be a distracting factor, if that makes sense. I was really proud of our guys.
Listen, it wouldn’t have been an appropriate game if, you know, if it was a tension-filled mosh pit down in front of their bench. That was probably the most fun of the game, right? But I think you have two organizations right now that have an insane amount of passion about winning and feel all of the joy and intensity and stress of this rivalry. But also are pretty good about being focused about what actually makes you play the best to give yourself the best chance to win.
I think both programs are probably in that space somewhere.
Question about how Lamont Butler’s presence opens up things for other players in the Kentucky offense.
Yeah, it’s really important, especially the way Louisville was playing. They stayed really-really pushed out. And so, him getting downhill to the rim was really important because when he got down there, it was a lot of space to operate. He had such a terrific burst. He’s gotta special burst. It matters, his ability to get downhill was really important.
Question about Otega Oweh’s ability to close games.
One of the great things about O is he is just in the moment. I think he’s got a pretty great capacity of just being dialed into the moment and not spending a lot of time worrying about the consequences of what might happen or what just did happen. He’s pretty good at being present, he’s actually really good at it.
I’ve got a story I want to tell but I’m not sure if I should. You guys — so we had a really fun moment. Our guys, you know, we are in this space talking about — it just hit me because you talking about being present.
Our guys have made a renewed commitment to be present in class every day. Otega happens to have an early morning class where he’s getting better and better at being present. A couple of days ago it was all hands on deck making sure it was there. Two minutes after class, we got a video from him of him sitting in an empty classroom because class was canceled and we didn’t know about it. He is the epitome of present.
In fact, I’m going to try to get him to put out the video, I’m going to try to get him to post it. It’s actually so delightful, because he didn’t really say anything, he’s like, ah. So he’s present, he’s present in class, he’s present on the court, he’s present in the closing minutes.
Question about Brandon Garrison’s playing time in relation to Amari Williams’.
I thought BG was giving us great energy. It’s fun with those two guys, they love each other and they both want to play 40 minutes. They are both starving to play and they both cheer for each other. It’s really a beautiful thing. Amari has been such an incredible big brother to BG.
In fact, both of them, Amari, every time he throws a great pass, he’s running down the court throwing eyes and now BG is doing it, BG did it tonight. It’s actually really fun. BG kind of had a good vibe out there and both of those guys were trying to manage their energy so they can kind of keep up and I thought BG was terrific tonight. I thought he was really, really good.
Question about when Mark Pope knew this combination of UK basketball players would “work” on the court.
I think it was when I seen the guys off the court actually more than on the court. I think we have a really good sense of off the court, of on the court, the guys skill set. We are still learning how to do it. Like tonight, there was this — there are so many moments when our, our ceiling is so much higher than we are right now in terms of the way we execute and understanding why we are doing it. We have so much growth we can do. I think there were a couple of moments that I talked about a lot where I saw, during the summer, guys going out of their way to really go be together.
Andrew Carr is like the dad of the team and he has been incredible. And Lamont Butler takes care of each of these guys one by one. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about someone is having a tough time and all of a sudden Lamont shows up and he’s gone way out of his way to actually just reroute that person’s day and the way he feels and we went on a service retreat to Eastern Kentucky and there was a couple of things I saw that I loved. One, you know, it wasn’t the guys idea to go do some reconstruction projects on some of these flooded out areas. They went and, you know it was a two and a half day affair but it was still eight to 10 hours of work a day and there wasn’t a single moment where anybody was hiding. The staff, we all finished that and were shaking our heads and said, man, we didn’t have anybody hiding. We never had anybody complaining.
The guys, it wasn’t like their favorite thing in the world to do but they were like we are here and we are going to work for 10 hours and we are going to work for 10 hours tomorrow. You see things like that. At the end of that we had a devotional where the guys each made one very specific commitment to the team out loud just with only the team there. You heard how thoughtful the guys were about what they were going to give to the team this year. And you see Lamont, we got a chance man and we have staying power and some resilience and we have unbelievable young guys. Unbelievable. It’s very cool, good group.
Question about what it was like for Mark Pope to coach in the Kentucky vs. Louisville rivalry.
Can I be honest? You guys know, I have a terrible memory. You guys know I was with Lee Anne yesterday. It was last night. I looked up at the two games that I actually played in and the game my junior we lost by two at Louisville. When I saw it, I was like, wait, what? I promise you, so I remember now. It was like locked away.
The bus ride home from Louisville. I was in a full on teary-eyed sweat last night. I blocked it out of my memory. And all of a sudden it all came rushing back. I’m starting to sweat right now. You get locked in the bus with Coach P for an hour and a half after two point loss against Louisville. I don’t wish that on any of you, actually. I bet only half of you guys would come out alive, I kid you not. And our senior year we had a runaway win.
Nathan Schwake and Jake Most and our kind of, and Billy Toombs are media alumni team did something that was really cool I thought was so special. I don’t know if you seen it but they found 15 players, former players. They had them each write a letter to our 15 current players about what this game means to them. That probably says it better than I ever could. If you haven’t seen it, take a look at it because it’s really special to our guys. It is what Kentucky basketball is.
Generation after generation being connected and understanding what it means. Those letters, I’ve got a copy of each one of those on my desk and they are really special to me and I think they are special to our guys. Sometimes, five, 10, 15 or 20 years from now, our guys are going to be writing letters to the next generation of players and keeping this connection going. That’s really special, super cool. That’s the good and bad of my memories about Louisville. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you all.
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