Mark Pope says Kentucky needs to be 'instigators' not 'receivers' to start games

Kentucky basketball under Mark Pope has been no stranger to falling behind quickly in games. in the two seasons so far of the Pope era, the Wildcats have found themselves behind at least 15 points in 22.5 percent of their games against Power Four teams, including Gonzaga, which comes out to nine of their 40 games against quality opponents.

The Wildcats once again found themselves in that situation on the road against #18 Vanderbilt, as in a span of three minutes with around 10 minutes to go in the first half, their deficit went from 13 to 22, which quickly provided a shock to the Kentucky team, where they were unable to overcome the large amount of points from then on. After the game, Mark Pope was asked about the continouous trend of having these slow starts.

"That's something that we're working on. It's obviously an area of concern for us," Pope said on Kentucky's slow starts in games. "We have to make some progress in the way we do things in practice, in games, in game prep. I felt like our guys had good juice, we just didn't have the intensity to hit first. We got punched in the mouth pretty good and we just didn't respond at all in this game. Us getting ourselves to an emotional heightened point where we can come compete from the tip where we wanna be the instigators of confrontation rather than receivers is really important. You don't get a lot of second chances in (the SEC), especially on the road."

Unlike the successful combacks in SEC play against LSU and Tennessee, Kentucky never was able to generate any physcality or aggressiveness in the game. They faced an offense in Vanderbilt that was not going to let this Kentucky team shut them down. In all of their comebacks this season, it has been the defensive end setting the tone to start the rally, but that same intensity was never there for a second on Tuesday. It seems like clockwork with Mark Pope continuing to be asked about his team's slow starts in these games, but it's a real concern, and his team learned that not every team is exploitable when you're trying to fight back from down big and Vanderbilt is one of them.

Can Mark Pope get his team to finally come out of the gates strong against a quality opponent? That has lacked more often that not this season, but especially on the road and in neutral site games.