Mark Pope admits his team has struggled engaging early in games

This Kentucky basketball team struggles with engaging early in games this season.

Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope after winning against the Tennessee Volunteers at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center in Knoxville, Tenn., on Jan. 17, 2026. | Angelina Alcantar/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Kentucky Wildcats once again found themselves in a hole during their embarrassing loss against Vanderbilt on Tuesday, but this time, they never could climb their way back. Kentucky had just 10 points in 12 minutes, before a run by Vanderbilt put them from down 13 to 22 points in the span of three minutes. The WIldcats were then forced to play catch-up, but they chose the wrong team to have to do that against.

Vanderbilt is known for their electric offense, and they displayed just that, but what was even more of a factor was Kentucky's lack of aggressiveness on offense. Time and time again, it was Kentucky's intensity being a major factor in the multiple comeback wins they have pulled off this season, but they never could find that same intensity that they have displayed throughout the five-game winning streak they had coming into Tuesday. After the game, Mark Pope talked about how he wanted to see more from his team in terms of being aggressive on offense, but he admitted it is more of a result of his team having a mentality issue in games. Pope says his team struggles to assert aggressiveness. Kentucky did not respond at all to physicality, which he says is a problem his team has faced all season.

"It's important, but we just need to do that to actually engage our team in the game," Pope said on the UK Sports Network after Kentucky's 25-point loss. "It's been a space where we've been fighting a difficult battle all year long to get our guys to kind of embrace this idea of like being incredibly physical and forceful to earn possessions for teammates. And we didn't do that at all. (Vandy's) switching hurt us. Their physicality hurt us. Their heavy bottoms hurt us. Their volume at the rim hurt us and we just failed to make the plays that you need to make in that situation actually combat that."

This was especially evident early in the game, but Kentucky settled for jacking up threes instead of attacking or cutting to the rim, but they never showed that effort and intensity at all in a loss that got out of hand rather quickly. Pope saying it has been a battle all year for his team is pretty telling. It seems like Kentucky still has multiple spans during games where effort is an issue, which is likely why they have found themselves down in all of their games on the road and neutral site this season, including having the third-most losses by 15 points or more in the last fifty years.

It's an ongoing issue that Kentucky consistently finds themselves in deficits early in games. That quote by Mark Pope is telling that his team lacks engagement with physicality in games, with a lack of intensity being a result of that.