Mark Pope shares what Kentucky needs to improve on to get to the next level
After looking at Kentucky’s performance against Wright State, it is hard to identify a bunch of areas where the Wildcats can improve, but not for Coach Mark Pope.
Coach Pope has been adamant for weeks now that his team needs to start pulling down more offensive rebounds. In the blowout win over Wright State, Kentucky pulled down seven offensive rebounds. The Wildcats lost the battle on the offensive glass as Wright State pulled down 11.
Here is what Coach Pope had to say about pulling down offensive boards at his Thursday press conference, “We’d like to be a 30% offensive rebounding percentage team. We’d like to be that consistently. That’s a bad number for our guys because it doesn’t really mean anything. I would love to live in this space. If we could be a 14 offensive rebound a game team, it’d be extraordinary, certainly above 10. We’re just not living in that space at all right now. We didn’t really make much progress last game, either, but it’s something that we’re really focused on, and we will make progress.”
A team like Kentucky that plans to shoot 30+ threes a game would love to be dominant on the offensive glass for two reasons. The first reason is threes lead to long rebounds, which is easy for the shooting team to rebound. The second being more offensive rebounds equals more shots for one of the best shooting teams in college basketball.
Coach Pope is correct that this is something the Wildcats need to work on over the course of the season. If Kentucky can start pulling down double-digit offensive boards per game, a scary team gets even scarier.
Mark Pope had some high praise for Lamont Butler after the win over No. 6 Duke
Kentucky got their first big win of the season over No. 6 Duke in the Champions Classic, and it was Mark Pope’s first signature statement victory as head coach of the Wildcats. One of the players who made big plays in the win was Lamont Butler, who helped seal the victory with free-throws in the final minutes along with Otega Oweh.
Mark Pope knows how important Butler is to this Kentucky team, and when he’s on the floor, Kentucky raised their bar. Pope even called the veteran guard the “foundation” of this Kentucky team. Not only that, but the team knows they need to stick together through it all to be successful.
“Lamont (Butler) is the foundation of this team. If you get to know Lamont Butler, like he’s one of the best people that I’ve ever met. That’s just not an overstatement. He’s a winner. We just talked about it, like, we’re riding or dying together, man. That’s how this team is. I feel the same way about Otega (Oweh), I feel the same way about Andrew (Carr). We’re our guys. We’re each other’s guys. We’re not going away from each other. If we have have a bad half, a bad play, a bad game, we’re running back to each other. That’s the conversation we had with Lamont. He doesn’t need much. He has a winner’s heart. He had an unbelievable second half. He really gave us a massive lift in the second half.”
“Lamont (Butler) is the foundation of this team. If you get to know Lamont Butler, like he’s one of the best people that I’ve ever met. That’s just not an overstatement. He’s a winner. We just talked about it, like, we’re riding or dying together, man. That’s how this team is. I feel the same way about Otega (Oweh), I feel the same way about Andrew (Carr). We’re our guys. We’re each other’s guys. We’re not going away from each other. If we have have a bad half, a bad play, a bad game, we’re running back to each other. That’s the conversation we had with Lamont. He doesn’t need much. He has a winner’s heart. He had an unbelievable second half. He really gave us a massive lift in the second half.”
Butler was pretty even in the stat sheet, like usual, contributing in many different ways. He finished the game with 9 points on 3-7 overall and 1-3 from three-point range, 4 assists, and 3 rebounds. He didn’t get a steal or block, but his backcourt teammate, Otega Oweh, had a block and 2 steals added to his stat line.
Kentucky fought back and showed a lot of poise and resilience to get the win, and Lamont Butler had some big plays to help make it happen.
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