Mark Pope, Kentucky basketball staff are ‘trying to live in that gray space’ of innovation

To new Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope, few things are more majestic than a perfectly executed offensive basketball possession. Crisp ball movement. An attempt early in the shot clock.

And preferably, it ends with a successful 3-point try.

“I think it’s beautiful. I love to watch it, right?” Pope said Monday during the Greater Louisville UK Alumni Club luncheon, held at Churchill Downs’ First Turn Club. “I love to coach it. I love to see guys grow their games in it, because you’re going to (play) with the most elite level of IQs you can bring to the game of basketball. It’s a really fun format to grow players in.”

Pope also enjoys how much “it really twists up” opponents. He recalled last season, his BYU team was in the early portion of its Big 12 schedule when players came to him. Bewildered.

“And our guys start getting really frustrated with our scouts. We spent a lot of time scouting other teams’ (defenses), so we’d do a full, two-day presentation on how the other team guards.

We spent a lot of time on that — and we were wrong every single time,” he said.”And so we’re four or five games in and the guys are like, ‘You tell us they’re going to guard like this,’ and we’re like, ‘Well, they’ve guarded everybody like this.’

And then they get to us and they’re trying to do something different, because we’re pushing the envelope on the game so hard that it ruins all of your defensive principles.

You kind of have to throw it out.”

As for the defensive principles he and his coaching staff are installing at UK, it’s cut from the same innovative cloth.

“We’re trying to live in that ‘gray space’ of coaching defense as an offensive team,” he said. “We’re trying to coach defense, and there’s these little uncertainties — these little cracks — that we’re trying to live in. And it’s fun. I think our guys love it. I love playing that way.”

Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.