Kentucky Bordering on Bust After Gonzaga Humiliates Mark Pope’s $22 Million Roster

The Wildcats’ high-priced experiment is unraveling fast as former players pile on and fans mercilessly boo, and Mark Pope is running out of excuses.

Kentucky guard Kam Williams and Gonzaga forward Braden Huff get tangled up during the Bulldogs’ blowout win. / Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Kentucky’s rough start to a much anticipated 2025–26 men’s college basketball season has turned from disappointing to dumpster fire. 

Boos poured down in Nashville by midway through the first half as the Wildcats’ highly priced roster put out its most miserable performance yet. Kentucky gave up the game’s first seven points, trailed 19–2 by the second media timeout and fell behind by as many as 37 in a 94–59 loss to Gonzaga that left Big Blue Nation enraged and embarrassed over a team that entered the season with title expectations. It even had former Wildcat stars on edge, with DeMarcus Cousins tweeting midgame that the team was “hard to watch” and “has no heart.” 

Can’t lie…this uk team has no heart! This is hard to watch smh

— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) December 6, 2025

To illustrate the scope of the disaster in Lexington, Ky., understand how noncompetitive Kentucky’s reported $22 million roster (believed to be the most expensive in the sport) has looked in its four games vs. high-major competition. Against its rival Louisville, the Wildcats got blitzed out of the gates with 13–0 and 10–0 first-half runs and trailed by as many as 20 in the second before rallying to make the final tally more respectable. Michigan State punked them early with an 18–2 run and led by 24 late before winning by 17. The Cats were in position to beat a shorthanded North Carolina most of the way, then missed 13 straight field goals (at home, no less) to see the Heels squeeze by them late. 

Finally, Friday’s debacle, which started with the positive vibes of the return of point guard Jaland Lowe but quickly turned into the worst showing of the Mark Pope era. Kentucky (5–4) isn’t just losing, it’s getting punked by any team with a pulse through the season’s first month. 

“We feel the responsibility that we have to this university and this fan base, and all the boos that we heard tonight were incredibly well deserved, mostly for me,” Pope said postgame.

The results are so ugly and the Wildcats look so out of sorts that the ready-made excuses that would have felt reasonable to explain away a more normal slow start fall flat fast. Yes, Kentucky is without its best pro prospect in Jayden Quaintance as he recovers from March knee surgery (something the Wildcats knew about when they recruited him). Lowe has missed significant time with a shoulder injury. Starting PF Mo Dioubate has missed the last four games with an ankle sprain. The finished product of what Pope built this offseason hasn’t been seen yet. 

But isn’t the point of laying out $20-plus million to build a roster that can withstand a key injury or two? At the very least, shouldn’t it be enough to avoid things completely combusting? Take those three players off the Wildcats’ proverbial cap sheet and this is still one of the most expensive rosters in the country. It’s hard to call what Kentucky did this spring anything other than an abject failure in roster building. Not having a true backup point guard was a disaster with Lowe sidelined. Highly touted international forward Andrija Jelavić has largely been a bust, as has Tulane transfer Kam Williams. Top-25 recruit Jasper Johnson was a major symbolic win to keep a local product home, but his on-court impact has been limited. The roster also doesn’t seem to fit what Pope has had success with throughout his career, with less three-point shooting and overall skill than he had in his first Kentucky team or several of his BYU squads. The Wildcats don’t have a formal “general manager” on staff, and this season’s mess suggests one might be sorely needed. This is a better roster than it looks through nine games, but it isn’t close to the best one in the sport, and that isn’t an unrealistic standard given the investment at play. 

Part of Pope’s magic from his opening news conference at Kentucky was his ability to be the voice of a true Kentucky diehard. That went beyond just being a championship-level player in Lexington; Pope had a keen understanding of how fans had soured on the way John Calipari ran the program, things that went beyond just the ugly NCAA tournament losses to Saint Peter’s and Oakland. He knew the Kentucky standard and expectations and had all the right things to say to align former players of all eras (except perhaps a few Calipari one-and-dones) again. But all that goodwill vanishes fast when results aren’t up to snuff, and watching Pope navigate all that may be as interesting as the basketball product the Wildcats put on the court the rest of the way. 

Kentucky coach Mark Pope is out of answers after the Wildcats’ latest embarrassing loss. / Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“As a former player, I’m pissed at the coach, too,” Pope said when asked about Cousins’s scathing tweet. 

The next two weekends feature opportunities to put out the fire … or ignite things even further. Next Saturday at Rupp Arena, the Kentucky-Indiana rivalry is renewed for the first time in a regular-season game since 2011. The week after, Pope faces his former coach, Rick Pitino, and St. John’s in traditionally Kentucky-friendly turf in Atlanta. Think things are toxic now? Just imagine if the Wildcats lose those two emotionally charged contests. 

It’s a near-unthinkable place for this program to be after Pope pressed all the right buttons in his first season on the job, but things can change quickly at a program with the expectations of Kentucky. Just nine games into a season entered with so much optimism, the Wildcats are staring down the label of college hoops’ biggest bust. 

---

More College Basketball from Sports Illustrated

Listen to SI’s new college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.

feed