Mark Story: Let's be blunt: Mark Pope has a roster construction problem

Mark Story, Lexington Herald-Leader on Dec 3, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Kentucky big man Brandon Garrison sank a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 13:08 remaining in Tuesday night’s ACC/SEC Challenge showdown with North Carolina, it was notable because it was the first Wildcats made trey of the game.

What was not known as Garrison’s jumper nestled through the net was that the 20,029 fans at Rupp Arena could have read the cumulative works of Leo Tolstoy before the Wildcats would score another field goal.

A Kentucky basketball season that has begun as an exercise in vexation took another frustrating turn as the No. 18 Wildcats fell 67-64 to the No. 16 Tar Heels in the ACC/SEC Challenge.

The victory by coach Hubert Davis and UNC (7-1) was part of a banner showing for ACC squads in the first of the two nights of the Challenge. Throttled 14-2 by the SEC last season, the ACC won six of nine games Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, UK is now 5-3 overall — and 0-3 in games that matter most to Kentucky fans against major men’s college hoops programs Louisville, Michigan State and North Carolina.

There were two reasons Kentucky lost.

— The Wildcats got hammered on the offensive glass by North Carolina 20-8 and were outscored in second-chance points 22-5.

— Kentucky’s offense was pretty putrid. UK shot a frigid 1 of 13 on 3-point shots; went from 13:08 until 2:43 in the second half without scoring a field goal; and finished the contest by missing 14 of its final 16 shot attempts.

The Wildcats also had only eight assists on their 23 made field goals.

“It’s going to be hard for us to win scoring 64 points,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said afterward. “It’s uncommon for us to be 1 (of) 13 from three. That’s not really who we are. More disappointing is the eight assists. That’s really frustrating.”

When you hire Pope as your coach, you figure the one thing you can count on is a high-scoring, offensively efficient attack. It was the modern “five-out” system Pope deployed at BYU that helped make the coach attractive to Kentucky after John Calipari self-exiled to Arkansas.

When Pope’s initial UK team was healthy last season, its offensive performances were a joy to watch, filled with ball movement, hard cutting and floor-spreading outside shooting.

Conversely, from the time Kentucky finalized its roster for 2025-26, the concern, surprisingly, was whether there were enough skilled offensive players to make Pope’s system hum?

With the caveat that UK is playing without some key pieces due to injuries, the early reviews about Kentucky’s offensive skill are not encouraging.

“I thought in the second half, our decision-making was poor,” Pope said. “(We got) caught up in the moment, trying to make (individual plays). We still have and are on a steep learning curve trying to figure out how to make plays for our teammates. We shoot it well when we actually do that, and (when) we don’t, we don’t.”

UK appeared to emphasize defensive length and rebounding potential in its roster building for 2025-26. Yet the Wildcats gave up 96 points in losing by eight at Louisville. Michigan State pounded the Cats 42-28 on the glass while hanging a 17-point defeat on Kentucky in the Champions Classic.

So far, against the quality teams, UK is still struggling in areas the Wildcats hoped to improve over last season. Meanwhile, the tradeoff to the altered roster emphasis is that the Wildcats lack the offensive acumen one has traditionally associated with Pope-led teams.

Asked what Kentucky can do to avert field goal droughts such as the one that cost the Wildcats the game against North Carolina, Pope listed multiple areas.

“One, pace of the game can really help you,” Pope said. “Two, having a couple of guys, places you can go that you really trust to go find you a basket. Three, just simple things like catching the ball with two hands. It’s really hard, you have a wide-open layup under the basket and you just dropped the ball out of bounds.”

It is fair to point out that Kentucky played North Carolina without three injured players who could be starting by March Madness (That assumes UK is going to make the 2026 NCAA tournament. Is it too soon to let the worry that the Cats might miss Madness enter into one’s mind?)

Jaland Lowe is the only true point guard on the UK roster and should supply some needed capacity to create for others when he returns. Forward Mouhamed Dioubate and center Jayden Quaintance, when healthy, will assuredly help the Kentucky rebounding issues.

Yet even when the UK roster gets to full strength, it is far from clear that there is enough offensive skill for Kentucky to reach the lofty aspirations with which the Wildcats — and their fans — began this season.

Suffice to say, worrying about the offense is not where one expects to be with a Mark Pope team.

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