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Things are going to get ugly around here after Saturday

MichaelGray

MichaelGray

All-Conference
Jan 13, 2026
709
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Anon1759768907 said:
there is an us, all i want is for kentucky to be good again, and i don't think it can happen under pope
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I think we can be good under Pope but not with this team, square pegs in a round hole is what this team is, the pieces just don't fit. We won many top 25 games last year with a lesser team on paper at least but they knew how to score & could shoot, they sucked at defense & couldn't play physical. So, Pope went out & signed players that could defend & play a more physical style thinking they could shoot better than what they do, he's figuring out now that they cant. I think he'll recruit more skilled players for next year that are better shooters & also sign a few defensive players.
 
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hypocrithatr

Junior
May 30, 2020
119
277
63
TheBlueMist said:
These people who pine for Calipari still look at their high school prom photos and think, "What could have been..."

Here's a thought, how about we do better than an aged and tired Calipari and an inexperienced Pope who is trying to learn on the job? You guys know there are other dudes out there coaching basketball successfully, right?
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C

Cats_2010

Heisman
Jan 8, 2010
11,700
19,830
103
The first half spread of Saturday’s game should be easy Pickings. Probably 8 points or so with arky favored by 14 for the game. They easily cover both, I’m calling a 40 point win for Arkansas. 90-50.
 
TuesdayBoost

TuesdayBoost

Junior
Jan 27, 2026
200
256
43
Wildcat_in_DC said:
right now in college basketball, you are 1 off season away of transforming your team and getting back to what you want to be. but it entails making hard decisions and smart choices.

going into the SECT they should announce mark will be let go but allowed to coach out the remaining of the season.

bring in a coach, go after the elite talent that is left and land a few key portal players. flip the script and do a reboot for the 2026 season. if you dont....its just going to be another year of this. hoping for wins.
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To be fair hope in Pope is the slogan right?
 
Rick Honcho

Rick Honcho

All-Conference
Apr 19, 2011
1,421
1,351
103
Cats_2010 said:
Pope is a dead man walking, only question is how long will the uk brass let him walk.
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Coach Pope assembled this paid mess of a roster, and it might very well end up turning into his one-way ticket out of town. After more than 45 games as the UK head coach, I don’t see any real indication that Mark Pope can be successful at UK in this current version of hired mercenary basketball. That’s not a criticism of Mark Pope as a person; the ability to motivate, coach and lead overpaid and selfish azzholes doesn’t grow on trees. He’s not an authoritarian personality or a hard-driver, and to me it’s clear he doesn’t command his players’ respect when he walks in the room. Sadly, Pope has zero street cred and his choir boy personality is simply falling flat with the jagoffs he selected to put on this roster. Absent this uninspired crew of obnoxious wannabes suddenly catching fire, doesn’t the Board have to seriously consider whether UK men’s basketball can continue down this path next season?
 
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Anony Moose

Senior
Dec 2, 2025
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CUJO_1970 said:
Cal won exactly 1 tourney game in his last 5 years here. Yep, Pope sucks but browbeating the fan base for wanting to move on from Cal is peak keyboard internet stupidity.

OP is a total dipshit.
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Moving on from Cal isn't the issue for most. The issue is we moved from Delmonico Ribeye to a damn round steak.
 
kywildcat1021979

kywildcat1021979

Heisman
Jan 10, 2015
18,698
31,307
62
chattanogawildcat said:
That's debatable. When was Cal relevant at UK in recent years? He wasn't.
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Amen to this I know Pope doesn't have what it takes to coach here but no way in hell did we need Cal after his last 5-6 years here we needed to move on from him too!

Our biggest problem is Mitch made another hire and this is the PROBLEM! He needs to be rail roaded out of town no simpler way to put it.
 
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J

JonathanW2

Senior
Aug 6, 2025
414
615
93
Yall do know that Ark barely got past 1-7 Oklahoma last night, barely got past 1-6 LSU in Fayetteville on Saturday. They lost to Auburn by 22, to Georgia by 14.
I'm not saying we will beat them. But I am saying while they will be favored, it is far from a lock.

I was actually pulling for Ark last night. No I don't normally want them to win, I rarely do. BUT...I think teams are usually more difficult to beat after a Loss, especially a Loss to a team they should have beaten, and especially when you are playing them at their Home after a Loss to a team they should have beaten.
 
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howitis_rivals115807

Senior
Aug 28, 2001
4,782
993
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Anon1768290537 said:
I think we can be good under Pope but not with this team, square pegs in a round hole is what this team is, the pieces just don't fit. We won many top 25 games last year with a lesser team on paper at least but they knew how to score & could shoot, they sucked at defense & couldn't play physical. So, Pope went out & signed players that could defend & play a more physical style thinking they could shoot better than what they do, he's figuring out now that they cant. I think he'll recruit more skilled players for next year that are better shooters & also sign a few defensive players.
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He is even worse at recruiting and identifying talent than coaching. you are living in fantasy land.
 
KFuqua

KFuqua

All-Conference
Oct 24, 2001
2,155
2,516
113
champagnecat said:
Nah Calipari’s last couple tourney losses were unacceptable. What Calipari never stopped doing was recruiting at an elite level. Pope CAN NOT do that. It’s his time to go.
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But what good did that recruiting for for him in those last years at Kentucky? His ONLY priority was trying to get a top class so he could brag about it and say he was the best at getting Freshmen to the NBA. He wasn't a good coach. I don't care how many players he gets to the NBA.
 
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T

TNCatfanforever

Heisman
Apr 3, 2003
21,972
13,697
62
Wildcat_in_DC said:
right now in college basketball, you are 1 off season away of transforming your team and getting back to what you want to be. but it entails making hard decisions and smart choices.

going into the SECT they should announce mark will be let go but allowed to coach out the remaining of the season.

bring in a coach, go after the elite talent that is left and land a few key portal players. flip the script and do a reboot for the 2026 season. if you dont....its just going to be another year of this. hoping for wins.
Click to expand...
This is exactly correct, but we don’t have an athletic director with the intelligence or the guts or the courage or the desire to do this. He has already cost the athletic program $100 million in his silly contracts until Barnhardt is gone. It will not get any better.
 
W

Wildcat_in_DC

Senior
Nov 25, 2025
653
888
93
I'm just going to assume we are going to lose all our road games the rest of the year. We just arent built for it. In everyone one so far we have tailed by double figures. I don't see why that trend would stop.

The remaining home games include: OKL, UT, UGA, Vandy, and UF. We will be underdogs in 4 of those 5 games.

I just don't see how this is sustainable and I don't see how you convince the powers that be that they should continue writing NIL checks to land players when the outcome and patterns are so disastrous.
 
RedwoodHigh

RedwoodHigh

Senior
Nov 18, 2025
366
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kywildcat1021979 said:
Amen to this I know Pope doesn't have what it takes to coach here but no way in hell did we need Cal after his last 5-6 years here we needed to move on from him too!

Our biggest problem is Mitch made another hire and this is the PROBLEM! He needs to be rail roaded out of town no simpler way to put it.
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What this says - KY HASN‘t been relevant in 7 years now.
 
RedwoodHigh

RedwoodHigh

Senior
Nov 18, 2025
366
560
93
JonathanW2 said:
Yall do know that Ark barely got past 1-7 Oklahoma last night, barely got past 1-6 LSU in Fayetteville on Saturday. They lost to Auburn by 22, to Georgia by 14.
I'm not saying we will beat them. But I am saying while they will be favored, it is far from a lock.

I was actually pulling for Ark last night. No I don't normally want them to win, I rarely do. BUT...I think teams are usually more difficult to beat after a Loss, especially a Loss to a team they should have beaten, and especially when you are playing them at their Home after a Loss to a team they should have beaten.
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Oklahoma & LSU are a lot better than 1 - 7 teams . Ky could very easily be 1 - 7 or 2-6.
We better be ready for Oklahoma or we’ll get Missouried again
 
MichaelGray

MichaelGray

All-Conference
Jan 13, 2026
709
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howitis_rivals115807 said:
He is even worse at recruiting and identifying talent than coaching. you are living in fantasy land.
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Recruiting the top high school players i can agree with you on & also coaching defense but he knows how to coach offense provided he has players that can shoot. The players he went after on this team can't shoot. One thing that puzzles me about him is why in the hell does he suck at coaching defense? He played for Pitino & he stressed defense. He may need a defensive coach just like Billy Donovan did at Florida. Those Florida teams would score at will but sucked at defense, so, they went out & hired Larry Shyatt from Wyoming to coach defense & won 2 titles back to back.
 
kfwa

kfwa

Senior
Oct 12, 2014
402
744
93
You guys really want a coach that openly talked about how he didn't like the SEC tournament, called the fans basketball bennies and sent assistant coaches out to the press conference after an embarrassing loss?

be mad at Pope all you want.

F.....ANY coach that loses to Oakland and St. Peters with NBA talent, I don't care if he is in the HOF or is Jesus' personal assistant

He might go to a final four at Arkansas, but it took his *** getting dumped from UK for him to get serious about being a basketball coach again.

If he was still here today, he'd be talking about his dogs as much as he does basketball
 
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U

UKWildcats1987

Heisman
Sep 9, 2021
19,665
34,274
113
Most expect to lose to Arkansas. Pope will show up unprepared as usual and Cal will get up big before letting an inferior team back in the game. Arkansas will win but by single digits IMO
 
BlueSince92

BlueSince92

All-Conference
Jul 2, 2025
10,459
2,798
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Shaudylo said:
Win or lose Saturday it’s already ugly .

Even during the win streak can anyone say that we looked great in any of the games ?
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To me, when Kam was with us and coming on, we were starting to look like a resourceful team that authentically had gotten confused by Pope’s complicated system early on and was starting to click as a result of him “just dumbing everything down.” To where it seemed quite possibly all along we’d had talent we’d been kind of cheating ourselves out of using, and now that we were using it maybe we really could be good once everything came together…. then possibly we could be even better if Pope had the chance to bring back in some of that complexity eventually, after we’d mastered the basics ….and even be great if that happened and it also turned out somehow, maybe one chance in fifty, Quaintance actually came back (which I think is highly unlikely regardless, but which I do also think would be at least somewhat more likely if we started playing much better as a team).

Now, we just look 🤢.
 
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Drcatfan

All-Conference
Apr 14, 2015
1,401
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For the people saying Cal’s recent tourney losses were unacceptable, you do realize we might not even make the tourney this year. Quite frankly we really don’t deserve to make the tourney unless we significantly improve
 
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BlueSince92

BlueSince92

All-Conference
Jul 2, 2025
10,459
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Drcatfan said:
For the people saying Cal’s recent tourney losses were unacceptable, you do realize we might not even make the tourney this year. Quite frankly we really don’t deserve to make the tourney unless we significantly improve
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We don’t, I agree. But also, if it were just a down year situation, Sweet Sixteen one year followed by missing the dance the next year still would be better than what Cal delivered us his last five years. But unfortunately with all our recruiting issues it’s not looking at all like just a down year situation.
 
Crazy4Blue

Crazy4Blue

Senior
Aug 5, 2021
192
528
93
I see no chance of us winning that game. Their players will be up while our will be...well, they way that they have been.
 
MarvinHagler89

MarvinHagler89

All-American
May 19, 2017
4,623
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Crazy4Blue said:
I see no chance of us winning that game. Their players will be up while our will be...well, they way that they have been.
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They will be checking their bank accounts during game. I’m actually surprised they don’t have their phones out on the court during game seeing how much of a pushover Pope is
 
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