Mark Pope is learning how to take advantage of how SEC officials call games

Kentucky basketball is coming off of a high-scoring and thrilling battle with #4 Alabama that ended in a 102-97 loss, and with no mid-week game, they're full attention is on Vanderbilt, who they face on the road on Saturday. Lately, especially in SEC play, fouls have been an issue for this Kentucky team, and it reared it's ugly head against Alabama as the Crimson Tide got to the free-throw line 34 times, essentially at will.

It was a big problem in the game, and has been as of late, and Mark Pope and the Wildcats are learning how to take advantage of how the officials call physical games in the SEC. Monitor reviews, fouls, both of those have been a talking point in every SEC game so far for Kentucky, and Pope wants his team to learn how to cut down on fouls and handle them better. In Kentucky's five SEC games, three of them ended with the opponent having more trips to the line.

"We're spending an insane amount of time right now on fouls. We've gone back and kind of categorized every foul that has been called on us over the last five games, and we're seeing some trends where we can really, really aggressively attack and make some strides, and that's really important for us to do. ...It's a beautiful time to be in the SEC. There's gonna be times where it's super painful, but as long as that pain is turned into us growing, and preparing, and getting better, it'll be worth it. ...We're actually spending a lot of time on fouls, and that's really important. ...It's given us some real direction, and I think there's a good chance that we have a chance to make some massive improvements. You talk about learning this league and learning the whistle, and that's a genuine thing. There are times when I internally and sometimes externally lose my mind with some of the officiating, but the truth is, usually when you back and watch the film, the officiating might not be what's your used to or how you would correlate things with the book, but there is some consistency with the officiating. The consistency may be surprising to us, but it's teaching us a lot, and we gotta grow really quickly in that area. If you think about our five conference wins, the two games that we've struggled in are the two games where we got really abused. We failed to perform in the free-throw disparity category, and that's a place where we can really grow."
Pope on learning the whistle.

In a league with this much physicality, the free-throws and fouls aren't going anywhere. It's good that Pope and his team are trying to learn how officials are calling fouls when there has been a lot of them lately. It has bit them in SEC play, but they're trying to get better with it.