Matt Jones on Kentucky’s terrible performance vs Michigan State; Mark Pope’s comment

KSR Host Matt Jones spoke to Big Blue Nation last night following Kentucky’s very disappointing performance versus Michigan State in New York City.

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Oh, Kentucky with an embarrassing loss tonight to Michigan State in the Champions Classic, 8366. Uh, a terrible performance that I think raises a lot of questions about the season and a lot more. Uh, you can give us a shout. We’ll open up the phones at the end of the segment. Um, I don’t there’s a lot I want to say, so it’s it’s hard to even know where to start. Uh, start. Let’s start with just the basketball part of it. Um this was just an absolutely atrocious performance by Kentucky. I mean, whatever statistic you want to measure, Kentucky was outplayed. Um shooting percentage two points uh for Michigan State, they shoot 50%, they shoot 50% from three. We shoot 35 from two and 23% from three. We are outrebounded 42- 28. That’s awful. 25 assists for Michigan State, nine or 13 for us. Just just a terrible performance. It looked uninspired. Uh and it looked discombobulated, which was a word that Pope actually used in the postgame press conference, and it was awful. And we’re going to talk about Pope’s comments, but I’ll just say from my end, that looked like a team that a I don’t want to say was not ready to play cuz their best seven minutes of the game were the first seven minutes, but they were out coached. They were out hustled. And Michigan State under Tom Mizo to me is a team that is a mirror to who you are. like you find out who you are when you play Michigan State because at least in the last decade, they’ve never had the most talented team. They’ve never uh they’ve never actually even been I don’t think they’ve been top five or 10 in a number of years, but what they do is they are fundamental. They rebound, they play defense, they make the right play, and if you whatever it is that you do poorly, they will reflect it. They are a mirror to you. And tonight they mirrored and showed that this team is way off the margin. You know, last year we said about Kentucky that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. And I actually think that was true. Even though, you know, their record was not amazing. I thought they had a really a better year than even the players they had. This team is less than the sum of the parts. This team right now is much worse than they should be. Kind of on all ends. I am shocked at how bad they are defensively. Really, I’m I’m shocked at how bad they are defensively. They can’t guard anybody. They gave they clearly had a game plan to try to force Michigan State to take jumpers and they made a lot of threes at the beginning and we didn’t really adjust and when we did we were just out hustled at other positions. They got any shot they wanted pretty much the entire game. And defensively, I always worried this team wouldn’t be a great three-point shooting team, but I never thought they’d be bad defensively. And tonight, with arguably your worst defender hurt, which is Jaylen Low, you should have been great defensively. And and they were awful. And then first half just eye bleeding bad. when you let Michigan State shoot 50% from the field and 50% from three, I just don’t know how you can uh you know how you can let that happen with the roster that uh that Mark Pope has. He said in his postgame comments, “We have good players and I’m not getting it getting out of them what what we need to.” I think they probably are missing some star power, but that doesn’t explain tonight’s performance. You shouldn’t lose like they lost tonight. No matter with acquaintance out low. I mean you you shouldn’t you should you you should have you should not lose by 17 to Michigan State in a game you’re never really in except the first seven minutes no matter what your roster is at Kentucky. So it’s on Pope. I mean it just is. I think he knows that. I think to the mo for the most part he has accepted that and he’s taken ownership but it’s on him. I was sitting there watch as I was at halftime sort of thinking about the deficit we had created. I was thinking about all these big games over the years o over these two years where Pope has had these huge deficits to start the game. Duke we came back and won but we were down 15. Gonzaga we were came back and won but we were down 20. Ohio State, we were down 18 in the first half. Arkansas, we got down big. Alabama, we got down big twice uh in two of the three games against them last year. Got down big against Louisville. Got down big against Michigan State. And in all of those games, I went back and looked in all of those games, we actually started pretty well. In all of them, in the first five to six minutes of all of those games, we started pretty well. And then when the first substitution comes in, because Pope’s big on the mass substitution, the team just has kind of collapsed and then the the other team goes on a run that we just can’t come back from. Now, tonight that happened, but then we put the starters back in and they were worse. I mean, the the worst plus minuses on the team for this game were the starters. So, it’s an embarrassing performance and it’s a performance that raises a lot of questions. When the game was over, uh, when the game was over, I was sitting there watching. First of all, Mark Pope took 50 minutes, I think, to come out. 55 minutes for the press conference. I’ve been covering UK a long time. That’s the longest I’ve ever seen a coach take to come out uh after a a losing performance. I can’t remember that ever happening. And he sounded just defeated. And I I I want to read you some of these quotes. I give Mark credit for I guess openness sort of, but then in some ways he wasn’t open. He started by saying, “We’re disappointed and discouraged and completely discombobulated.” Now, Billy, I give him credit for alliteration on that. Yeah. But he sounded so dejected. Like I’ve ne I mean I remember when he came here, somebody that knew him at BYU said to me, “He loses poorly.” Not in that he takes it out on other people or he’s not a good sport, but he seems to internalize it so much that he becomes it’s hard to see him like that. And that’s kind of how I felt tonight. Here are some quotes from the postgame. There was one team that was really well coached and one team that wasn’t tonight. My messaging is not resonating with the guys right now. I got to take the hit for this. I’ve got skilled, talented players that care and I just can’t get it right. And he’s correct about all of that. He clearly knows that this has been kind of an abysmal start for the amount of talent that he has. He then ends the press conference though by saying, “We will not fail this season.” Very, I mean, not mincing words. We will not fail this season. That’s strong words. That’s a quote that will come back up throughout the year and, you know, we’ll live one way or the other. But then I was excited to see what would he would say to Tom because I think coaches I I think some coaches get this like Rick Patino got this when he would talk with Kaywood that conversation with Tom Leachch is ultimately your message to the fans. The fans don’t hear the press conference. They snippets that media puts out. But the but the radio part is directly to the fans. And I got to tell you, Billy, I couldn’t have been more disappointed in his comments. I mean, I I couldn’t have been more disappointed in the way Mark handled that one-word answers. He wasn’t rude to Tom. Like, there were times that, you know, you go back in history, Billy Gillespie would be rude to Tom. Cal wouldn’t be rude, but he’d sometimes be short. Mark wasn’t that, but he was like not at all open and seemed to completely forget that there’s a fan base like yearning to hear what he says. And it was epitomized when Tom said what I thought was a very good question. What did you tell your guys in the locker room after the game? And he said, “We told them a lot of things.” That’s it. That’s it. We told them a lot of things. Like what kind of answer is that? That’s a horrible answer. If Cal had said that, I would have ripped the guy. How can you do that? Your fans are sitting there waiting for you. How can you say we told them a lot of things? I don’t understand. He has been so good with this fan base and then all of a sudden starting with the Louisville pregame, I feel like the last 10 days have been a different person. The whole cryptic messaging of what happened in the Louisville locker room, I guess he didn’t get asked that tonight. I’m kind of surprised, but he didn’t. the whole Taylor Swift we’ll throw some crumbs out. We still don’t know about Jaylen Low really at all. He had some weird comments in the pregame. And then this I mean he’s got to know that this is a fan base that I mean I don’t think they’ve turned on Pope by any means but are at least questioning what’s going on. And I don’t Billy we told them a lot of things. I mean what does that mean? Yeah, I felt bad for Tom. I mean, we waited a long time for that interview. And I mean, Pope talked for what, three minutes? You guys broke it up into two segments. 311. Yeah. Three. Okay. 3 minutes and 11 seconds. I mean, that’s an interview that’s like, I think, usually 15 minutes. 3 minutes and 11 seconds. So, you know what worries me about this is he looks like a coach that doesn’t have an answer for all this. that just doesn’t have an answer. And you know, this job’s hard. There’s a lot on this job. There’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of responsibility. And it’s a big job. And lo, winning here is the best thing in the world. But losing here stinks. All right. Our fans can be really hard. We can be really great. We can be really hard. But with that sort of great possibility, which Mark knows, comes responsibility. And on both of the major ways you measure coaches, success on the floor and then communication off. This has been a 10day miserable failure. The Louisville game, I can understand. Louisville’s good. You’re playing on their home floor. you know, they get off on a run. Uh Muel Brown is is a great player. Like, I get it. But this this was a disaster. And I don’t know. I’m very disappointed. I’m not giving up on the season at all. Um but there’s a lot of problems on this team. They don’t defend. They can’t make shots. And let’s be honest, they don’t seem to like each other. I don’t know that there’s chemistry issues, but does that look like a team that likes each other? There were reports that Brandon Garrison and a couple of guys were jawing at each other on the bench. That doesn’t surprise me because they don’t play like a group that likes each other. And that’s crazy because when I was around them during the preseason, they seem like a group that really got along well. But I don’t know, they they seem like completely different pages, guys. Just I mean, did you see people lifting each other up during the game? I didn’t. So, it really has in 10 days kind of fallen off the tracks. And I’m not saying they can’t get it back on. There’s still plenty of time. But I did not think they would be this bad. I thought they would lose to Louisville. I didn’t think they would lose tonight. But whether they were going to lose or win, I certainly didn’t think it was going to play out like this. You know, I certainly didn’t think that we were going to be questioning effort, chemistry, and our coach’s response both in X and O’s and in dealing with the fan base. It’s very, very disappointing. And fans out there who are concerned, I get