Mark Pope planning to tweak rotation ahead of Kentucky's matchup with South Carolina

Pope is searching for adjustments to get his team back on track.

Feb 4, 2025; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope reacts during the second half against the Mississippi Rebels at The Sandy and John Black Pavilion at Ole Miss. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

Kentucky is looking to bounce back on Saturday against South Carolina after a blowout loss to Ole Miss, now losing four of their last 5 games. During this stretch without Lamont Butler, that is forcing players to step into Butler's role at point guard, and it has also led to some unusual rotation patterns. With the rotation currently in flux, Mark Pope doesn't plan on shortening it anytime soon.

Instead of shortening it, Pope wants to expand the minutes of the younger players like Travis Perry, Trent Noah and Collin Chandler. His hope with doing that is to get the team's energy levels up again and keep them fresh throughout the game. Pope knows his team lives off energy, and that has been slipping lately in their recent losses.

"We're an energy team. We feed off energy. We live and thrive off energy. The way we were built to beat team was though just wave after wave of energy. We've kind of gone to some space where we went three or four games where we were playing several guys, a bunch of guys, over the 30-minute mark. That's a real argument we had. We kind of go back and forth with ourselves. ...We think we have good young players. So, we'd like to expand their minutes so we can have more intensity and energy on the court, more consistently from different guys, but time is going to tell whether that's actually a winning strategy or not. ...For us to be at the very best we can be with the players we have, the way we're built, the way we're designed, the way our skill sets flow, the more energy we can infuse in this game is a really key part of it, so we're going to keep trying to stretch that way."

Pope on expanding role players' minutes.

Instead of expanding the rotation, it sounds like Pope is wanting to use the younger guys more to get energy from a bigger variety of players, while keeping each other more fresh. It's all about increasing those energy levels, and with how much they need to bounce back on Saturday, they'll need it as soon as possible, especially defensively, which has been their biggest struggle without Butler.