EMBARRASSING: Kentucky Wildcats LOSE to Florida Gators Again, Is There Any Hope For Mark Pope?

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It was too little too late against the Florida Gators and now the Wildcats face the disappointing

reality of having to play Wednesday in the SEC tournament.

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Your daily podcast on the Kentucky Wildcats.

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Alright, what's going on, big blue nation?

Welcome on into Locked On Kentucky, your daily Kentucky Wildcats podcast.

I'm your host Lance Dillon on today's episode of Locked On Kentucky.

We are going to be recapping Kentucky basketballs, 84-77 loss to the Florida Gators on senior

day.

Too little too late after a very pathetic first half showing from Kentucky, essentially

only one player shows up for the cats.

And now they have to play on Wednesday.

Maybe it'll be good for this group to go play in Nashville early to try and build some

momentum after whatever this game was.

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Because you love being here 84-77 is the final score.

The cats finished the regular season on a two in five skid, finished 10 and eight in

SEC play for the second time in the Mark Pope era.

Now 10 and eight in SEC play in both seasons as the head coach of the cats.

The last time Kentucky finished with a 10 and eight record in conference play or worse

was that 2021 campaign during COVID where Kentucky went nine and 16 overall eight and

nine in league play.

So the wild cats hitting a low that they've not seen in quite some time failed to get to

20 plus wins in the regular season again for the first time since that 2021 COVID year.

In this game set up perfectly for Kentucky, everything, everything set up beautifully

for the wild cats Vanderbilt beats Tennessee.

You get to see Arkansas win and overtime without derrius eight cuff on the road against

Missouri.

The cats have all the opportunity in the world.

All you got to do is beat Florida to secure a double buy in the SEC tournament.

And this game started out and the most embarrassing way possible a Evan me a kill shot from

Florida and 11 nothing run to begin this game.

Kentucky after that point was trying to play catch up.

They gave up two more I believe one more kill shot in the first half of this game.

And they got down by as much as 20 at one point in this contest.

And then finally for the last maybe seven minutes or so of the contest.

They decided to actually play ball and and try and make this a competitive game.

That's the thing I continue to tell you about this team and it is obvious at this point.

There's no other way to put it.

This is a team that is just struggles mentally.

They are just a mentally weak squad with a lack of upper echelon talent.

And they don't have the personnel frankly to get themselves through a game.

And whenever their coach decides to sub out the personnel that's working for players

that I'm immediately allowed Florida to go on a 13 nothing run.

It's hard to defend the players, the coaches, anyone in this situation.

Kentucky did this game to themselves.

They did this to themselves.

I will continue to say I think Kentucky matches up well with the Gators.

They play hard against Florida and the two games that Florida has had recently

that have been close have been kind of like a little too close for comfort

have been against the wild cats.

Now as Dick Vitale mentioned on the broadcast and he was right about a lot of things

during this broadcast today.

There are no moral victories.

And so I'm not going to sit here and fluff this up for you.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's all hunky dory that it's all going to be okay.

That everything's going to be fine for Kentucky.

This season we're kind of at a loss.

It's going to take a miracle for them to go on a run in Nashville and it's going to take

an even bigger one for them to go on a run in the NCAA tournament.

Any sort of expectation for that to happen should frankly be thrown out the window if

it has not been already for you.

This is not a very good team.

This has not been a good season coaching from Mark Pope.

He has had to deal with injuries.

We acknowledge that we've gone in depth on this show about how important injuries have

been to this squad, especially not just this season for the last half decade or so.

It does not get past me that Kentucky was down three players today.

However, the thing that we have continued to discuss on this show that you've continued

to comment about and that everybody on Twitter is seemingly agreed upon is that this team

does not give consistent effort and that appeared to be the case to begin this game.

Even Goose Givens on the broadcast was saying they look shook.

They look scared.

They look like they're worried out there already to begin this game.

And I saw on Twitter and I would love to have this confirmed whenever I get off this

recording that Jack Goose Givens said that Kentucky showed up in this in this game and

did not believe that they were going to win this contest accused Kentucky of not believing

that they had a chance against Florida today.

That is if that's true and I think other people have said Pope says said similar things.

If that's true, that is just beyond unacceptable for what this program is.

And I'm not going to say again, I'm not going to sit here and fluff this up and tell you

that everything's all hunky Dory will talk about some of the positives because there were

a couple in this game.

But this is a loss at home on senior day in a game at one point you were down by 20 and

it should never happen it should it should never occur.

Mark Pope is not going to get fired this season.

Let's go ahead and cut to the chase for anybody out there asking for anybody out there declaring

it.

It's going to happen.

He's not going to be let go this off season.

The athletic director is leaving in June for a cushy one million job to sit on his

butt and do nothing.

And the university is going to pay for that and I still can't believe it.

I just I cannot believe that.

That is just wow to me on 950 that I'm getting I'm getting sidetracked here.

Pope's not leaving the athletic director is not going to fire him.

He's not in a in a position to in the literal twilight hours of his career as the athletic

director in this pro at this university.

It's not nothing nothing is going to change.

Nothing's going to be different.

This team's going to go into the SEC tournament on Wednesday.

We'll see if they play as the nine or the 10.

And we'll see what happens.

And I have no faith no faith.

And then in them pulling off a miracle turning things around.

They don't have the depth.

They don't have the talent.

They don't have the I guess you could say the stamina considering all this had all our

coach talks about is fatigue fatigue fatigue.

Did you notice today that for the majority of this contest actually no excuse me one,

two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Florida played an eight man rotation today.

They played an eight man rotation.

You notice how they never get tired.

You notice how they never get eat be they don't need a little nappy poo on the sideline.

You notice how that doesn't happen for those players because they're well conditioned because

they're prepared.

Our coach is not doing that.

He's not he the staff is not conditioning this team well enough.

They never did.

And frankly, they're not coaching rotations well enough.

To throw Jasper Johnson in to cause a 13, nothing run for him to turn the ball over for

I believe he took a horrible shot in the middle of this as well.

Just I don't get it.

I don't I don't understand some of the coaching decisions.

I don't understand the desire to call sets occasionally that gets get Kentucky open looks

and then the desire to not really do that.

I don't get it.

I don't understand.

I don't quite understand the coach the limitations the coaching coach is putting on this team.

Now I do understand the personnel problems.

Kentucky's not fast enough.

They're not athletic enough.

They're not strong enough mentally or physically.

They're just not that good of a roster.

Sorry.

This is not an indictment on who they are as people.

This is not an indictment on of who they will become as basketball players.

This team this season right now is just not a very good basketball team.

Let me rephrase they're not up to Kentucky standard.

This is far below the Wildcat standard and something has to change and frankly like I mentioned

it's not going to the coach is still going to be here.

We still right now have no recruits.

Something is going to change for this Wildcats program and the only thing that we can look

forward to and hope for in Nashville and the NCAA tournament.

It's just a miracle run that comes out of nowhere because this team's not fighting that

hard for it until there's about 10 minutes left in the game.

We'll continue to break this one down very disappointed in the performance today from

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All right, continuing along here on today's episode of the show, Lance Daw hanging out

here with you.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

This has been a brutal season.

And I'm very appreciative of all of you that have stuck around 19 to 12 is what the cats

end their regular season as not even close to where they wanted to be the aspirations

of this program.

And it ends in a frankly embarrassing loss to Florida on senior day 84, 77 is the final.

I usually can appreciate Carl ravage Jimmy Dykes, except I disagreed with some of the

things that they had to say at the end of this game on the broadcast.

Kentucky does not have momentum going into the SEC tournament.

They were saying, Hey, they fought back.

They've got a little bit of something to cling on to dig vital was right at the end of

this game.

He was spitting facts.

There are no there are no moral victories in this.

There are none.

There are none.

And any sort of fire any sort of spark that Kentucky creates for themselves emotionally

to make that Nashville run happen to make that tournament run happen to close out this

horrible year is going to have to come from within.

And we've not seen it all year.

And you can you can run to the comment section and you can tell me, well, it happened in

this one game or this one game or maybe this one game.

It's not happened for a sustained stretch of games.

The steam just hasn't gotten up when they've needed to be desperate.

They fall in flat on their face and the culmination of that the perfect example was the start

of this contest.

And frankly, the start of the first half of this game.

You're down 49 to 32 in the first half at the end of the first half.

You're down with nine minutes and 43 seconds left by 20 68 48.

Just it's just not a good team.

This is not this is not what this is not what we we expect at Kentucky.

It's not what the fans deserve.

It's not what you deserve for sure.

And for all of the emotion and the money and the time that all of us spend on this.

It's not worth it to you.

It is not what we came here for.

And I can guarantee you if you ask the players, they'll say the same thing.

This is a disappointment.

This is sad.

I feel for Aberdeen.

I feel for O.A. frankly, if we're talking about just the two, I thought O.A. had a really

good game.

He played his hard out.

He played his tail off.

Now did he fly to the rim and make some really bone headed mistakes and get swatted?

Sure.

Is he going to get swatted by every team in America?

Probably not.

But did he drop 28 points, knocked down four threes and play his hard out for 38 minutes?

I think he did.

I think I weighed tried on senior day and I have to tip my cap to him.

One of the best I've seen put on the Kentucky uniform during my time doing this show.

It's going to be somebody that we all look back on very fondly.

Maybe this era of the Mark Pope era is, it ends up souring in a lot of our minds.

But O.A. still a very, very, very good player did not miss a free throw today, by the way.

I thought he had a great game.

But you feel for some of the players, if you ask them how they feel about it, they'll

say they're disappointed, they're sad, but their play doesn't reflect it.

Their mental doesn't reflect it.

Their body language.

I've never seen a team be more defeated in their body language at this level of the sport.

I've never seen a squad like this where it's clear they get down and it crumbles quick.

And it takes a lot to get them back up off the mat.

It takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy against lesser teams.

They were able to come back against A&M, a 29 to three run.

It's going to kill you.

It's going to kill any team against a team like Florida, you give up 49 points in the

first half and a couple of kill shots, you're not going to win that game.

It's two, it's too little too late.

It's cute that you scored 45 in the second half.

It's cute that you scored 77 overall would have been real nice if you had given that

energy and intention to detail at the beginning of this game when you were fresh.

When you did have the energy, when you were coming in well conditioned and you didn't

have fatigue, again, this is on the coach.

This is on the players.

This is on the staff.

This is on everybody.

19 and 12 with all of the all of the talk and all of this bull crap talking about in

the offseason.

How we're pursuing number nine.

And for it to fall apart like this, I understand you are down three players.

It does not miss me.

What does make me upset is the lack of consistent effort.

And you're not getting that from this team.

And I know a lot of you have already said, let's just go ahead, pack it up, move on.

There is a small part of me, a very small part of me that's still for some illogical reason

has some sort of sort of hope that the team figures it out, that they go on the run to

the SEC championship in the SEC tournament that they push for an elite eight.

And we can all put this in the rear view and forget about it.

I want that to happen so bad and a small piece of me still believes it can happen.

It's a very small piece.

We'll dive into some more that happened in this game and just overall thoughts on it in

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All right, wrapping up today's episode, the final episode of the regular season will

be back on Monday to preview the SEC tournament.

We will get more info as to where Kentucky will lie in that later today, but Kentucky's

either going to be the nine or the ten seed after having a chance to be the four today,

thinking, lining up perfectly for you and you come out flat and it's not enough.

I will give credit to the Gators, they've been playing really good basketball to close

the season out.

That's a team that can win a national title with that rotation that they have.

They've got great forwards, they've got really good guard play right now.

They're shooting the ball insanely well.

They're getting to the foul line, they're rebounding, they're efficient on both ends and

they played really well today.

Give them credit for the effort that they came into today with because it would be nice

to see players at the University of Kentucky, the all time winning his program in college

basketball history.

It'd be really nice to see them play with that level of intensity and want to as a team

like Florida.

It would be nice to get that out of our players, it would be nice for our coach to be able

to get that spark out of our guys on senior day.

But unfortunately, we can't eight threes, eight of 18 is what Florida went in this game.

They shot 44% from beyond the arc, or excuse me, they shot six of 10 in the first half,

44% from beyond the arc for the game.

And the second half, you know, Kentucky kind of clamped down a little bit.

Gators went 10 of 33.

They did go to the foul line 21 times, but they only hit 13 of those free throws.

And Kentucky just couldn't do enough to be honest with you.

They had their chances.

Denzel Aberdeen, frankly, missed way too many wide open shots off of offensive rebounds.

The amount of shots that Aberdeen left short today was just, it's embarrassing to have

that many opportunities and to go four of 13.

It was a bad performance from Denzel today, who I thought I think has been a positive

for the Wildcats for this season.

It was a bad game.

Marino fouled out in this game.

He had four turnovers and four assists.

I thought he played hard for the second half, especially, but just some bone-headed mistakes,

some mental lapses that you can't afford to have.

Jasper in 10 minutes, I thought was in that negative.

The box score stats would reflect that.

Yes, he knocked down one open three good for him.

But three point shooting does not make a complete player, especially whenever he's a

Cohen on defense and can't handle the ball, and he turns the ball over in crucial moments.

It just, you can't have it, you can't have it.

At this point, the freshman stuff has to go away.

He's played 30 games now, or he's been practicing with this team.

He's been playing for over half a year now.

You would have expected some sort of improvement, some marginal amount of improvement.

You've not seen it from him curious to see if he stays on this team next season, curious

to see if Pope keeps him just because he's a Kentucky kid.

I don't know.

Same goes for Trent.

No, same goes for a lot of players on this team, man.

I just, I don't know.

I just, I just do not know what Kentucky's going to do in the off season.

That's the other thing, man.

If you want to try and point this here to something positive to close out, it's like,

like, where, where are you going to go?

You don't have a recruit on your, you don't have a high school recruit committed to you.

You don't.

And there's no guarantee you're going to go even get good players in the transfer portal

because we just saw you completely stink it up in the portal once with on all of these

guys you could have had.

And now, and now the, the jury's out for any high profile transfer portal kid.

Why would you want to come here?

Why?

Outside of the money, which is what all these kids are chasing right now.

Why would you want to come here outside of the money?

It's just not very good.

Just not very good.

If they make a run, it'll take a miracle.

If they make a run, it'll take a miracle.

Kentucky did not get whipped on the boards this time.

They lost the rebounding battle by one.

Both teams had 14 offensive rebounds.

Florida had just two more second chance points.

Kentucky actually had nine more bench points because well, they played their bench when

they don't need to.

I did think Diabate had a decent game, played hard, physical in that second half.

Most of the book, most of the good things came in the second half.

But again, you can't play one, the game is not one half a basketball guys.

It's two freaking halves.

You play, you, and that's the thing that boggles my mind is like, Pope continues to talk

about fatigue.

Oh, just eat the little boys out there.

Division one college basketball players just need a little sleepy time.

And yet they play harder in the second half.

What are you doing for the first period?

What are you doing?

They actually ended up pretty decent and assisted turnover ratio.

They actually won points off turnovers as well.

They only got worked in the paint by six points, 38 points for Florida to Kentucky's

32.

The area where they got crushed, the reason that they lost this game were fast break

points.

Florida had 24 Kentucky had four.

It's not going to win you many games, it's not going to win you many games.

Even in steals, two less blocks.

They shot 39% from the floor as opposed to Florida's 46, 35% from three, 81% from the

charity stripe.

This statistically actually wasn't that crazy of a game in favors Florida.

The only thing that just stands out like, oh my gosh, or the fast break points to have

20 more because your kids didn't get back.

I guarantee you, Pope's going to talk about sleepy little boys just can't run back that

fast.

They just can't do it.

We're 30 games in the season and they just need to take a little nice little naphy poo

on the court.

They're so tired.

They're so sleepy.

It possibly expect division one athlete to the University of Kentucky to be able to

play 35 minutes a game.

Oh, it's just the humanity.

Oh, they need an app.

And you know what's funny is Florida, Florida players don't.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

It's just, it's just ridiculous from the staff from these players.

I'm just, I'm disappointed.

I am disappointed, guys.

No other way to put it.

There is no reason to sunshine pump.

There is no reason to be like, well, everything could be hunky.

Dory.

If we just go on a run and that's going to happen, it's not going to happen.

And if it does, it's a miracle.

So don't get your hopes up.

And at the very least, just hope and pray for some reason.

We land some guys in the portal this off season.

I'm so, I'm so tired.

We'll talk about what will happen in the SEC tournament.

My guess is they're going to get a pretty decent first game.

There's a positive for you.

Will they be able to actually put together two competent performances?

We'll have to wait and see.

We'll talk about it then.

You can follow the show on Twitter at locked on UK, follow me on Twitter at

LanceDaw underscore and follow the show over on Instagram.

That is a Kentucky podcast.

Thank you guys so much for tuning in genuinely.

I do appreciate it.

Any questions, comments, concerns, you can leave those in the YouTube comments below.

Hit me on the socials.

We'll see you all tomorrow for another episode, Monday for another episode.

Hope you guys have a great rest of your evening.

Get some rest and God bless.

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