Mark Pope Currently Has No Idea What The Hell He's Doing As A Coach And It's Ruining Everything About Kentucky Basketball
This is not a fire Mark Pope blog. At least not yet. What this is, is me having eyes and a brain and watching far too much college basketball. Mark Pope is lost. It's not the fact that he came from BYU or anything like that. He has no idea what the fuck to do with this team because he built it thanks to the 3 ass kickings from Alabama a year ago. He preached we needed toughness and defense and all this other shit that is nowhere to be found.
What it resulted in was another embarrassing performance. Another marquee game and setting new lows people haven't seen in their lifetimes:
Instead of doing anything that made sense, Pope decided to run two big lineups. The same shit that got Calipari run out of town. Losses to teams in marquee games, not winning in March and an outdated offense. Instead of outdated it's just Pope trying to fuck a square over and over again. He keeps trying to run the offense that was so good a year ago with no one that can run that offense. That's how you end up here.
That's how you end up with a large, vocal group of Kentucky fans screaming for Pope to get fired in his second year. That's how you end up with the entire fanbase pissed off that these marquee games are turning into ass kickings. I don't care about the money spent on a roster, what matters is getting guys who can show up and actually have some balls. Last year's team was full of guys that had balls and heart. This year? Soft as shit. Not just soft, embarrassing and pathetic is more like it.
I know it's January. Nothing matters into March, but I have no fucking faith or hope with this team. Yeah, they are getting healthy. Great. That's not solving the lineup issues. That's not solving the fact this team can't shoot or Chandler regression to being unplayable and Pope refusing to just play the best 5. It took 34 minutes to get a lineup out there that made sense. It took that long to actually make this a game, but yet again, down too early because of stupidity the entire first half from players and coaches.
Figure it the fuck out or start the coaching search with a new AD. No other options.