Mark Pope era begins with opener against Wright State

The Mark Pope era will be ushered in Monday night against Wright State at 7 p.m. (ESPNU).

UK cruised through a pair of exhibition wins against Division II competition. The Cats beat Kentucky Wesleyan 123-52 in the exhibition opener, placing eight players in double figures while making 21 of 42 from behind the arc. Then, UK topped Minnesota State 98-67 behind 24 points from Jaxson Robinson.

In the Minnesota State win, the Cats had some trouble early getting shots to fall. But UPope liked how his team responded.

“One of the best things about the (Minnesota State) game, there was all kinds of weirdness, we’re playing weird rotations against a really well-coached, good team,” Pope said. “There was all kinds of weirdness the first 14 minutes and I think the score was 23-20. (Over the next three minutes), our guys had gone on a 17-0 run and we hope that’s a defining feature of our team.”

Pope, who is preparing for his first game as head coach at his alma mater, likes a couple of the qualities that his team has that will allow them to assemble a game-defining run.

“There’s two things about it.

The first part of that is that our guys are super resilient and we have a team that can go fix things,” Pope said. “We’re a veteran team, we see the game, we understand the game. And the second part is, we know it’s always coming.

As aggressive as we are offensively and as solid as we can be defensively, we always know that it could be in the first five minutes of the game, it could be in the last seven minutes of the game, there’s going to be a two or three minute run where it’s going to be the death knell, where we get it done. I like those two features of this team.”

Kentucky’s opponent on Monday, Wright State, was 18-14 last season and returns some key pieces from last year’s squad. Among those are junior forward Alex Noel, who was selected as the Horizon League Preseason Player of the Year for this season. Noel averaged 14.5 points and eight rebounds per game last year.

The Cats embark on a new regular season with a new head coach and, essentially, an entirely new team.