Kentucky beat two number 1 seeds...

[MdWIldcat55]

Just pointing that out. Not making too much of it. Without looking it up, other SEC teams probably did the same by beating Florida and Auburn, though no one else beat Duke and Florida, and no one else who beat Duke beat any of the other 3.

I do think it says that when completely healthy, and even sometimes when not (like the Florida game) Kentucky wasn't that far off where you need to be to reach the Final Four. If Robinson isn't hurt, if Butler isn't hurt, if Carr isn't hurt I think Kentucky likely makes it one more round, to the Elite Eight.

I agree with the consensus that Kentucky needs to be more athletic, taller and quicker on defense to be a Final Four team. I feel pretty good Pope will be able to close that gap in the next couple weeks. I'm not going to wring my hands over every "portal miss." Indiana, Kansas and others had much higher rated "portal gets" than Kentucky overall in 2024...

 

[Seth_C]

Honestly, if we had been mostly healthy all season we also would have been a seed line or two better, improving our chances.

Actually, if we had faced pretty much anyone but Tennessee in the Sweet 16 we had a decent chance of making the Elite Eight. Unfortunately, the committee paired us up with the only team in the tournament who cared more about beating us than winning a championship.

 

[crestcat]

Just pointing that out. Not making too much of it. Without looking it up, other SEC teams probably did the same by beating Florida and Auburn, though no one else beat Duke and Florida, and no one else who beat Duke beat any of the other 3.

I do think it says that when completely healthy, and even sometimes when not (like the Florida game) Kentucky wasn't that far off where you need to be to reach the Final Four. If Robinson isn't hurt, if Butler isn't hurt, if Carr isn't hurt I think Kentucky likely makes it one more round, to the Elite Eight.

I agree with the consensus that Kentucky needs to be more athletic, taller and quicker on defense to be a Final Four team. I feel pretty good Pope will be able to close that gap in the next couple weeks.

Pope is shopping in a better market this year and everything hasn’t been picked over.

 

[wkycatfan]

This team exceeded my expectations for sure. Pope had no roster other than Travis Perry when he was hired.

 

[clevenger32]

How many teams would have made the Sweet 16 if they would have only had a complete roster, missing three of their very best players, for only 8 of their 30 +
games?

 

[AJG-15]

Few things derailed this season:

-the time that Pope had to put together the roaster resulted he had limited options on who he got and how much time he got to teach his system

- injuries on key players: Butler, Carr, JR, Kriisa

- with few exceptions the roaster was build having in mind to complement players and style of plays and not so much to double the skills . So when injuries happened on some key players affected u s’more than staff anticipated and didn’t know how to mitigate them always having the dilemma changing rotation vs style of play.

- the huge drop between the top 7 players : Butler, Oweh , JR, Carr, Amari, Kriisa , Brea and the remaining players on the roaster : Perry , Noah, Chandler , AA, Garrison, which was obvious when key players started to get injured.

- lack conditioning on same players where they could not play more than 20 min.


The last 2 points should be of concern for next year , as some of those players will return . This could also be seen as an advantage, because. Ow they know the system and what Pope wants to run. Pope indicated he likes very very much these players for this reason is important to have them back. They will need to massively improve over the summer to have an impact. As Pope sees them in practice every day we can only trust that he is right in his assessment.

 

[kywildcatsfannumber1]

There were a lot of highlights in year one of Pope. Beat Duke in the Champions Classic, Beat Gonzaga, 2 wins over Tennessee, beat Florida, Louisville, A&M, Mississippi State, 2 exciting wins over Oklahoma and Missouri on the road. Injuries definitely impacted this team. Pope kept adjusting and this team had to learn on the fly in the middle of SEC play how to win without star players. It will get better from here and Pope will have more time to assemble a great team without having to hire a coaching staff in the process.

 

[JonathanW]

All of the above is true.

And you may not have seen it in our starting 5 most games, but you could see it in our bench depth. The best example was the Auburn game when the 3 FR who weren't expected to play much this year had to put in 69 minutes in that game.

 

[The_Answer1313]

True.

I think we got a bit of a break as we got Duke early. And the Florida game it took a historical offensive performance to knock them off.

I feel like even completely healthy, we were prob quite a bit below the top four teams. Fully healthy tho, we probably on the level of say......UT, MSU, St Johns etc.

 

[Titpwhami2014]

Agree, we are a lot closer to cutting down the nets than most realize. Duke aside, we had a veteran roster like the other three teams in the FF. Just lacked the same level of athleticism. The injuries hurt too.

Get some guys like Demery, Gwah, etc. in the portal, sign some better rebounders, and lock Oweh in the gym this summer and make him shot 1,000 shots a day…we’ll be cooking next year.