This Kentucky team has deeper problems than just a lack of execution

Mark Pope's Kentucky Wildcats have had a brutal 2025-26 season for more reasons than one.

Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope looks on during the game against the Missouri Tigers | Matt Stone/Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

It's no secret that Kentucky Basketball's 2025-26 has not been good. Quite frankly, it's been bad, and a roller-coaster of emotions from BBN thanks to a team that provided hope and turned it into let downs, especially with the mid-December wins over Indiana and St. John's. There have been plenty of common themes this season, including Mark Pope's squad facing huge deficits early in games. When the team plays basketball, it's not fun to watch, plain and simple. Kentucky is now 9-6 on the season, while being 2-6 against power conference teams.

Mark Pope continued coming back to a lack of execution with Kentucky, specifically on offense, after their loss to Missouri on Wednesday. The issues are bigger than just that with this Kentucky team, and it's deeper than an offense with no execution or movement, Let's take a look at a couple of big-picture reasons why the Kentucky Wildcats can't seem to get things on track, and why the future looks dim:

The Wildcats have an identity crisis

To be honest, this Kentucky basketball team hasn't found their identity at all this season, and it goes back to the embarrassing 17-point loss to Michigan State on Nov. 14. That followed a loss to Louisville where the Wildcats trailed by as much as 20. Kentucky's offense looked abysmal, with no movement and constant passing around the perimeter waiting for one guy to make something happen (Jaland Lowe admitted that on Tuesday), and Pope had no answer for why his team was struggling so bad at that time. "We're facing a monumental challenge right now... I'm disappointed with how disconnected we've been. I thought I had a better pulse than this," Pope told The Field of 68 after their November loss to the Spartans. "If you build the right way, then your identity is not about an individual person. Your identity is about a collective group," Pope went on to say after the loss. It wasn't just that, though because even days earlier Pope mentioned Kentucky's identity issues, too, saying, "I wish I was further ahead right now with this group. In terms of this group's identity."

Kentucky followed up that horrible November stretch with a 35-point loss to Gonzaga, a late-game collapse against UNC in Rupp Arena, and now, starting 0-2 in SEC play for the first time in 20 years. Poor execution has been a big issue, but it has raised the question, does Kentucky really have an identity? We were told so by Mark Pope and Rick Pitino, after the Wildcats leaned on "smash mouth basketball" and their defense (which was hyped up all offseason), against an unranked Indiana team and a St. John's team who has no identity themselves, especially offensively. But, it seems like Kentucky fans were lied to, and that "identity" was a disguise for their poor offense and the glaring issues that everyone can see on the court after Alabama toyed with their defense and Missouri's 15-2 run to close out Wednesday's game. Pope is clearly still facing those same identity issues he and the team were facing earlier in the season, and those old quotes are very telling now. The lack of spacing and movement is eye-opening, and the crazy part is it's nothing new. Here is a perfect example of this Kentucky team not knowing what to do:

This is a totally wasted possession.

No real movement. No penetration.

Jaland Lowe misses the hoop on a step back 3. pic.twitter.com/a6AdcnNJMM

— Brandon Ramsey (@BRamseyKSR) January 8, 2026

Now, things have continued to be so bad offensively that the staff has had to "simplify, dumb it down" so that the players can try and understand better in order to execute. I don't know about you, but it doesn't sound like a good sign when you're in January and still do not have an identity, let alone perform so bad that you're having to dumb things down for your players. That sounds like players not understanding your system to me. Of course, things could get turned around, but the identity issues speak to how hard it's going to be to get this team on track and finally show to be who everyone thought they would entering the season. Not even fully-healthy Kentucky looks pretty on the court. It looks like a team that does not fit Mark Pope's system, a team that has no shooting to fall back on or to spread the floor, even though Pope is still hanging on to believing they can become a good shooting team, hoping it can translate into games. A total disaster is the best way to describe Kentucky's identity.

The "internal frustration" is becoming common

During Kentucky's loss at Alabama, the team expressed a lot of "internal frustration" as Pope put it. The players were yelling at each other, and it got heated. So much so that Otega Oweh had to calm things down, according to Pope. Here is what Pope had to say about that internal hardship on Saturday: "Our guys got pretty chippy towards the end of the first half, which was, which was a very welcomed response with the film from me. They got really chippy with each other, and the frustration was overflowing a little bit, and they got really vocal, and it was everything going wrong. That was the most comforting thing that happened towards the end of the first half. ...Otega was the guy that kind of gathered the guys together as they were interpreting each other and just ushered them into the locker room."

Well, something like that happened again on Wednesday in their loss to Missouri in Rupp Arena. Kentucky forward Mo Dioubate was seen jawing with assistant coach Cody Fueger, just days after calling out Kentucky's preparation against Alabama (which Nate Oats exposed), saying they didn't take the scouting report seriously, before also calling for Jaland Lowe and Jayden Quaintance to play more, all in the same press conference leading up to Wednesday. Combine that with the identity problem the Wildcats have had all season, and it's a chemistry problem that it all boils down to.

Frustration isn't supposed to become a trend, It becomes a reason for change, and Kentucky has not changed, and haven't even showed signs of doing so, even when putting a healthy team on the floor. If things don't change anytime soon, Kentucky basketball can kiss their NCAA Tournament hopes goodbye this season, because right now, the resume is bleak, and so is the outlook on the rest of the season.