Mark Pope has been inspired by Kentucky's early-season struggles

Kentucky got a feel-good 88-46 win on Friday night in Rupp Arena against the Loyola Maryland Greyhounds, one that was much, much needed for the team's morale after having two rough weeks, dropping both of their first marquee matchups of the season by a wide margin. The Wildcats have looked bad as of late, including a big lack of focus on defense and minimal movement and flow offensively.

It was against a lesser of an opponent, obviously, given the Greyhounds are nowehere near the level of a Louisville or Michigan State, but it was still very, very important to see things flowing better and players showing much more focus and effort. Mark Pope was asked if he was doing okay mentally after looking very down after the embarrassing 17-point loss to Michigan State, which came just a week after the other embarrassing loss to Louisville, where the Wildcats were down as much as 18 points.

Pope's response to the question? He acknowledged he is a bad loser, which is why he was as down as he was Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden, and given the team's two terrible performances against their biggest tests of the season so far.

"I stunk after Michigan State, I was terrible. Listen, guys, I'm a terrible, terrible loser. I'm the worst, like, it disqualifies me from this position. I hate it with a passion that is unknown on the planet Earth. I hate it, and especially here, like, this jersey matters, this thing matters, and sometimes, when you're holding back all your emotion, I think that was probably more of a manifestation of me after the Michigan State game. So I was so proud of myself for not saying the things that I wanted to say, actually. ...We got to get better, and we will stop at nothing to get better. And there was nothing that'll stop us from getting better. And we won't sleep, we won't eat, we won't do anything till we get better. We're going to get better. And so you know, and that's going to take every ounce of our soul to do it."

What does Pope think of his team's struggles so far this season? He knows his team has a long way to go, and he loves every second of the ride to get where they want to go. "We got a long slog ahead of us, and I'm hyped. I'm telling you, this is my Heaven space right here. It's ugly and it's tough and it's great and it's what I'm born to do, and that's what this group is born to do. And so we're gonna hit some hard space, but it'll bring it and let's go. I'm actually so happy and in the misery of it, like, I just love every second of it, and I love the fact that we're a little bit in the hole, and we get to pick ourselves out. I think that's inspiring to me."

The performance on Friday that included a team sharing the ball more and playing suffocating defense has to only help this team's mindset as they work toward having a better showing in their next big test, which will be against North Carolina on Dec. 2. But first, they'll get another feel-good opportunity on Wednesday.