Saturday night showed Kentucky still hasn’t completely turned page from John Calipari era to the Mark Pope era

The Kentucky Wildcats have done a lot of good things in head coach Mark Pope’s first season as the head coach. Four wins over AP Top 10 teams, six wins over teams in the top 15 of the NET Rankings, a 3-1 start in the gauntlet that is the SEC. All of these things with a completely revamped roster, and it’s really impressive what the Wildcats have done through 21 games in a season that was widely viewed as a transition season for the Wildcats.

Speaking of transition, Saturday night’s 89-79 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks, led by former Kentucky head coach John Calipari, showed that the page maybe hasn’t completely turned from the John Calipari era to the Mark Pope era. Calipari’s shadow still loomed large in Big Blue Nation on Saturday night, and the Razorbacks leading for the entire second half did little to eradicate it from Rupp Arena.

“Our guys are pretty disappointed,” head coach Mark Pope said. “[A] complicated stretch for us, but I thought for most of the night we showed a ton of fight and we have a good group.”

The emotions were high last night inside Rupp Arena, but that was the crescendo of them. They had been high ever since 9:30 on Tuesday night following Kentucky’s win over Tennessee in Knoxville. From the moment that game ended, the attention turned to Saturday night and John Calipari’s return to Rupp Arena.

For 15 years, Coach Cal led Kentucky to an incredible amount of success. A National Championship in 2012, four Final Fours, seven Elite Eights and 410 wins. One of the most successful eras in Kentucky history, and it was all being relived in the days leading up to Saturday night’s game.

For as much as the emotions were for the fans on Saturday night, it looked like the pressure got to the Kentucky players. ESPN color analyst Jimmy Dykes, calling the game, kept saying that the pressure for Kentucky to win this game was going to get to them. The longer Arkansas hung around, overcoming an early 18-12 deficit in the first half, the more the pressure increased amongst the Wildcats.

“It’s every night is the biggest game ever,” Pope said. “This is every game, right?  That’s the beauty of Kentucky, right? If we go on the road, it’s the biggest game ever. We are really blessed to have the greatest fan base in the world, and so every night here is the biggest game ever. I think our guys are pretty used to that.”

Saturday night was one of the most anticipated games in Rupp Arena since it opened in 1976. Even though most of Kentucky’s revamped roster didn’t play for John Calipari when he was the Wildcats head coach, his shadow loomed larger than ever leading up to and during this game.

Even though Kentucky is 15-6 (4-4, SEC), it still feels like the Wildcats haven’t won the game that will completely turn the page from the John Calipari era to the Mark Pope era.

“I feel like respectively, we should have won regardless of who was on that team, and who was the coach. It’s just this game, we should have won, and could have helped [Mark Pope] move forward,” Kentucky graduate center Amari Williams said. “But, you know, we got to put that in the past and get ready for Ole Miss on Tuesday.”

It looked like Kentucky was going to run Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks right out of Rupp Arena when the Wildcats made their first six shots to jump out to an 18-12 lead. But Arkansas’s hot night shooting, that included 13 three-pointers, combined with Kentucky playing without starting point guard Lamont Butler kept the Razorbacks in the game. Karter Knox’s three-pointer with 32 seconds left in the first half gave Arkansas a 46-45 lead. It was a lead Arkansas would never relinquish.

“We’re asking a lot out of our freshman right now and guys are playing out of position,” Kentucky graduate guard Jaxson Robinson said. “We are just doing what we can, but we aren’t using that as an excuse. We just have to figure out a way to move past it and put up some wins.”

Kentucky has now lost three of its last four games. But in the SEC this season, that, and being 4-4, is not necessarily a bad thing.

“We talked after the game just very briefly about this game and about our job, right, how it is very much, like we have to move to the next game, there can’t be carryover,” Pope said. “This grieving process that we go through and for our guys they care so much, it really is a grieving process, a five-step process.

“It’s the greatest thing in the world that that we get to do it, it’s the best thing in the world.  It’s super painful right now. We can’t indulge in this for very long.  It just makes it all complicated, you know, if there’s anything about tonight it was just kinda all kind of complicated, conflicting, upside down, twisted up feelings, with everybody in BBN. ”

Tuesday night’s game at Ole Miss is an opportunity for the Wildcats to get back to over .500 in SEC play. Win at Ole Miss, and the path to get to 9-4 going into the game at Alabama on February 22nd is visible.

Big picture, Kentucky still has plenty to play for, primarily seeding in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. They may not have come out on top in this game, leaving the page still not completely turned from the John Calipari era to the Mark Pope era. But there will be plenty more opportunities to completely turn that page, and that’s for a Wildcats team that has shown resilience and growth in their first season with Mark Pope as the head coach.

“We are really good team,” Pope said. “We have guys that are really really competing.  We’ve got some guys that are growing and actually in the process. Because they need to step up and be better for us, and we have guys in the process doing that and we are all doing it all while playing great teams and having two or three successes and having some setbacks. And it’s awesome.

“You know, this is a journey for us,” Pope said. “This is not a coronation, this is a journey.  We’re going to earn our way through it, and there’s going to be some pain on the way. Certainly for my guys tonight, it was super painful.”

But pain is only temporary, especially in the SEC this season. The next conference game for all 16 SEC teams is another opportunity. For Kentucky at Ole Miss on Tuesday, the opportunity is to earn another road win against a really good Rebels team and get back over .500 in SEC play.

ESPN’s Karl Ravech, who called the game with Jimmy Dykes and Alyssa Lang last night on ESPN, has referred to Mark Pope’s first season as Kentucky’s head coach as a “honeymoon.” A former Wildcat who played on Kentucky’s 1996 National Championship team, Mark Pope knows Kentucky Basketball. He lived it as a player, and now he’s living it as a head coach.

But it can rain during honeymoons on some of the days. Mark Pope talked about resilience following Kentucky’s win at Tennessee this past Tuesday. That may be the quality that most stands out about this Kentucky team; their resiliency. Arkansas rained in a deluge of 13 three-pointers in their 89-79 win over Kentucky on Saturday night in Rupp Arena. Now, the Wildcats can’t let that rain turn into a pouring monsoon. They can’t let Saturday night’s loss linger into Tuesday night at Ole Miss. But given the resilience Kentucky has shown this season both in games and after losses, it shouldn’t take long for the Wildcats to, as Mark Pope said last night, race to the next game.