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Mark Pope just gave Kentucky its most enjoyable postseason moment of the 2020s
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It had to feel good.
Say what you want about Kentucky fans, many of whom have enjoyed more glorious NCAA Tournament moments in their lifetimes than all the rest of us combined. Nobody on the outside looked at that fanbase or that program and thought, “man, they need one.”
But I’ll say it. Man, they needed that one.
It wasn’t just that the Wildcats beat Troy 76-57 in the Round of 64; that was UK’s most enjoyable postseason moment of the 2020s. Easily. With all due respect to the Providence win in 2023, AKA the only UK NCAA Tournament victory of the 2020s until Friday, beating that team in the Round of 64 had a bit more angst considering the Cats were in a 2-possession game with 75 seconds to play. On Friday night, with 75 seconds to play, Mark Pope’s team was up 20 and getting ready to empty the bench.
A vintage UK performance, it was not. But as Kentucky fans have become all too familiar with in the 2020s, NCAA Tournament victories aren’t to be taken for granted. Not when you get beat by Saint Peter’s and Jack Gohlke. I mean, Oakland.
Times have changed.
The faces — basically all of them — changed since UK walked off the court after yet another stunning upset loss in last year’s NCAA Tournament. That’s been well documented throughout the Pope era, and not just because he’s been willing to stay late after games and sign every last autograph. No, vibes are different because Pope isn’t his predecessor in basically any way.
That was painfully obvious with how a hobbled Kentucky team finished that game on a tear. When it was a 2-possession game with 13 minutes to play, UK didn’t turtle. Never mind the fact that second-leading scorer Jaxson Robinson was sidelined, or that lockdown defender Lamont Butler was wearing a protective shoulder brace in his return from injury. Shoot, never mind the fact that Kentucky made layups look like quantum physics for too much of the night.
Still, though. No turtling was had by the 3-seeded Cats. Instead, a 16-0 run over the next 5-plus minutes put the game on ice.
Sure, it helped that Troy made all forms of offense look like quantum physics for far too much of the night. Kentucky’s length certainly had something to do with that 35% clip from the floor. Andrew Carr had 3 blocks and Amari Williams took out his offensive frustration on the glass with 13 boards.
But Kentucky has shown up to many an NCAA Tournament gym in the 2020s and been the longer, more athletic team. The more poised team? That’s been rare. This team checked that box.
It’s probably unfair to lump the 2024-25 Kentucky squad with any previous versions of UK during the 2020s because other than the fans, everything has changed.
(Well, I probably shouldn’t assume that UK kept every member of Big Blue Nation after the Gohlke experience. You get the point, though.)
Kentucky’s exorcising of demons wasn’t inevitable in 2024-25. Not with the injuries, and especially not with how fickle March has been for the better part of the decade. Shoot, the last time that Kentucky had an NCAA Tournament win that satisfying, COVID wasn’t a thing yet (it speaks to UK’s 2020s luck that perhaps the program’s best team of the decade had the NCAA Tournament canceled because of the pandemic). It was against Kelvin Sampson in 2019. That was his first time making it to the Sweet 16 at Houston. He’s since reached the second weekend in every NCAA Tournament while Kentucky has … yeah. You get it.
That’ll be on the minds of many on Sunday when UK takes on the winner of Illinois and Xavier. In a weird way, though, winning on Friday felt like a significant feat in itself for Kentucky.
It was certainly a feat for Pope, who got the reminder from Butler in the postgame interview that this was his first NCAA Tournament win as a college coach. You can bet that Pope soaked that in.
“I’m so proud of our guys. I’m happy for them that we get to stay awhile longer,” Pope said on CBS. “We love playing together, we love being together and we know that we’ve got to keep winning to do that. I’m happy for our guys.”
With the injuries to Robinson, Kerr Kriisa and a limited Butler, it might be an uphill climb for UK to put together a deep run. Time will tell.
At the very least, though, UK breathed a long sigh of relief knowing that unlike the first part of the decade, no house of horrors awaited the Cats on opening weekend.
No matter how Sunday plays out, that’ll feel good.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
