Mark Pope had a message for BBN following loss to Missouri

Kentucky basketball has had a brutal start to the season. After dropping their first four games against power conference opponents, things haven't gotten much better. The Wildcats have picked up two quad 1 wins since, but used a second-half surge in both to make them happen. Now, Kentucky is 9-6 on the season after starting SEC play 0-2 for the first time since the 2005-06 season.

Things are bad right now, and as of the most-recent loss to Missouri in Rupp Arena, not even a fully-healthy Kentucky team looks good on the court right now. The Wildcats just took a home loss that ranks as a quad 3 loss on their resume. Despite the current hardship the team is going through, Kentucky coach Mark Pope had a message for BBN following the brutal loss. His message? Fans are right to feel however they want, but he, or his team, are not going to quit on the season:

"It’s a hard space. This is tough. It is not the way we intended to start SEC, but it is exactly what we have in our hands right now," Pope said. "When you go through hard times, which everybody does, the question is, how much does it take to break you? And I’m not about to break, this group is not about to break, and we are no place there. The only thing you can do is grieve as quickly as possible and move on to the next incredibly challenging game, which we have on Saturday, with the effort of trying to get better. These guys will. BBN has the right to do and say and act however they want. They're the greatest fans in the world, and they should be, I'm sure they're incredibly, incredibly frustrated and upset. So they get the right to do whatever they want."

Kentucky Wildcats fans react to the game against the Missouri Tigers | Mandatory Credit: Jordan Prather-Imagn Images | Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

What does Kentucky have to do in order to turn this season? The team can show all of the heart that they want in games, but it all comes down to executing on the court, which the team has obviously struggled to do against power conference opponents all season. "I'm really frustrated with our pace and our movement," Pope said. "We're not going to be good on the offensive side until we find some pace. We're just not. When you don't have any pace, everything's easy (for the defense)."

Pope has talked numerous times in the last month about the team's play not translating from practice into games. It started with harping on their lack of effort and hanging on to the team's shooting ability, but now, it's all about executing, and Kentucky is going to have to figure out how to create some movement on offense, because quite frankly, it's not a good product of basketball to watch.

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