By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
Kentucky coach Mark Pope hasn’t had time to blink in his first season as coach of the Wildcats.
“It’s (gone by) so fast — too fast, actually,” Pope said earlier this week. “… it’s been an epic, dramatic, incredible, wonderful, painful journey, all the things that you want and we can’t wait to get to the postseason.”
Before Kentucky can think about the Southeastern Conference Tournament, however, the 19th-ranked Wildcats (20-10, 9-8) close out the regular season at No. 15 Missouri on Saturday. A win over the Tigers (21-9, 10-7), coupled with the outcomes of other league games on Saturday, could propel Kentucky to as high as a No. 5 seed in the conference tournament. The Wildcats can finish no lower than an eighth seed.
“We’re doing it a lot because it’s fun,” Pope said. “It’s March. This is the best. We love every bit of it.”
Missouri, which went winless in the league last season, has been one of the top success stories in the league this year. The turnaround by the Tigers was engineered by third-year coach Dennis Gates.
“I’m really happy for him because I’m a huge fan of his,” Pope said. “I think he’s one of the really special coaches in college basketball.”
Missouri’s success has been largely attributed to its home performances. Gates’ squad has compiled an 18-1 mark in home contests this year. The lone setback was a 67-67 loss to Texas A&M on Feb. 8.
Missouri has lost three of its past four games down the stretch, but Pope knows the regular season finale will be a challenge.
“They have incredibly capable shooters who are dangerous,” Pope said. “They have the ability to focus in on some places they want to attack and come back to them over and over again. We run a lot of the same actions offensively, we value spacing the same way offensively.”
The Wildcats are coming off a much-needed 95-64 rout of LSU in their final home game of the year Tuesday and have begun looking ahead after dealing with roster uncertainty because of injuries.
In the win over LSU, Pope’s squad attempted more than 30 shots from long range and made 12 of those, a throwback to the team’s offensive mindset earlier in the year before the injury bug took a bite out of the team’s routine.
“For probably the last six to eight weeks, we’ve just been trying to stay above water, managing all of the changes,” Pope said. “For the first two or three months, we were just focused on getting better and then we went through a period in the season where we just had so much change to our roster and rotation, we were just like, how do we survive?
“This will be our third straight game where we have the same unit out on the floor. There’s some real comfort that comes with that. We’ve got to have pace in the game because that’s when we play our best. I was really pleased with that number.”
Pope would like nothing more than to enter the postseason with a victory.
“I think you want to get every single win you can,” Pope said. “We would love to win, we would like to go into the SEC Tournament on a bit of a run.”
GAMETRACKER: Kentucky at Missouri, noon, Saturday. TV/Radio: ESPN, UK Radio Network.