Kentucky
Mark Pope reveals meaning behind postgame 'autopsies' for Kentucky: “Win or loss that's dead and buried”
By now, you’ve probably heard Mark Pope throw around the phrase ‘autopsy’ after games. It’s his version of film review, dissecting a 40-minute battle for the Kentucky Wildcats from start to finish, figuring out what worked and what did not leading to a win or loss. That’s what he uses to prepare for future opponents and follow important trends, deciding what needs to get fixed with urgency and what his team can build upon.
What does that look like for Pope and his staff following a game, though? What answers are they searching for when they put on the rubber gloves and safety goggles? He gave a thorough description of his version of a basketball ‘autopsy’ when previewing the team’s matchup vs. No. 4 Alabama on Thursday.
What is an autopsy?
“It’s pretty extensive,” the Kentucky head coach said. “We have our own formatted report that (assistant video coordinator) Matt Santoro puts together. Over the years, we’ve developed all of the things that we really care about. We’ll get that report, we’ll get an HDI report, we’ll get the box score — we get the whole thing — and then we’ll each individually break down film, then we’ll do it together as a staff, then we’ll do it together as a team.”
It may make sense for some to find the glaring flaws in hopes of fixing them right away. That’s what everyone does, hoping to make wrongs right — especially after a loss. For Kentucky, it’s the exact opposite.
Instead, they put a pin in those issues and dive into everything the team did well.
“The first thing we look at is, what did we do well? You cherry pick the stuff you did well,” Pope said. “If you want to get better at something, find yourself doing it well and focus on it and show it over and over and over again. Like, that’s really true. It’s way different than I’ve ever experienced approaching the game.
“As coaches, we’re so good at — we watch 10 minutes of film and we find the 17 mistakes, and it feels like a victory. That’s actually — it’s not the way we do this. We work really hard because the things that are mistakes are glaring. They just shout at you, it’s like, everything’s fine, and you see the mistake, but I think the real skill in coaching is finding guys doing it great. Sometimes, as a coach, you just gloss over that stuff because there was nothing wrong. There’s nothing to fix, and we’re fixers, it’s what we do. We go fix the problems.”
Focusing on the good, not bad
Among the questions asked when the staff first begins an autopsy?
“What are we doing well?” Pope said. “What did we do great? What part of the game plan did we execute well? Where have we really grown? Where can we show our guys something we didn’t do well before, but we’re doing it great now? What are things that our guys didn’t even realize that they did well, that we did really well? We’ll spend a lot of time on that. We’ll spend very minimal time — certainly on video — on the things that we’re doing wrong, but we’ll take that in as a staff and really digest that as a staff.”
Then when it comes time to finding and correcting the mistakes, they actually circle back to moments when they did those things correctly to drive those points home. If they’re rebounding poorly, the staff finds all of the times they attacked the glass with force and intensity to come away with boards and try to recreate that magic.
That’s how they determine the next steps and how to continue to improve.
“Sometimes we’ll see something we really struggle with — which we did, we struggled in a couple areas in the last couple games. What we do is we actually go back and we’ll grab film of us doing it really well, and we’ll talk about where we’re getting ourselves in trouble, and then we’ll show them a bunch of clips of us doing it correctly, right? Autopsy is all about that,” Pope said. “The biggest part of autopsy is, like, where are we trying to grow directly over the next few weeks? What are our long-term goals? How is this new data set — how has it changed where we’re trying to head? What is it telling us about our team? What’s it telling us about our rotation? What’s it telling us about guys we have on the floor together? What’s it telling us about substitution patterns? The whole deal. It’s super fun. It’s like a puzzle.”
Games are to be ‘dead and buried’
The dictionary definition of autopsy is “a postmortem examination to discover the cause of death or the extent of disease.” If that sounds dark and deadly for basketball comparisons, it’s because it’s meant to be.
They perform autopsies because they represent games that deserve to be ‘dead and buried,’ as Pope puts it. Once one ends, it’s time to turn the page and focus on what’s next. No looking back.
“It’s really important. We always think about it like this: win or loss, that’s dead and buried. That’s done,” he said. “We’re going to take all the data, we’re going to take all the information we’re taking, but we’re moving on. We’re flipping the page, right? I think it’s two parts. I think one part is, we’re going to dig deep. We’re going to — I mean, I don’t want to get too tasteless, right? Everybody is about to go to lunch, but we’re digging really deep.
“We’re trying to uncover everything we have, and then it’s dead and buried. We’ve got to move on to the next thing. That’s important when — sometimes the wins are harder to get over than the losses. We’ve got to turn the page, bury it and let’s go.”
Any lingering issues?
What are the things currently plaguing this team, things that continue to pop up during autopsy sessions that aren’t getting fixed for one reason or another? Pope actually can’t thing of any — at least none that continue to linger with no sign of active growth.
That’s one beautiful part about this group: when adversity strikes, they find ways to respond.
“I don’t have a lot of things we’ve talked about for six weeks that we haven’t made progress on now,” he said. “We have a lot of things that we talk about every single day where we’re making progress and we want to make more progress. There are a lot of those. But one of the blessings of this team — I’m telling you, it’s a gift to coach this team. I’m so lucky that I get to coach this team because we don’t have a lot of things that we — there’s not a lot of times we’re pointing the guys in a direction.
“Sometimes we don’t see progress in a day, but over the last week or two weeks or month, there are not things where we’re like, ‘I’ve said this a thousand times’ or ‘We’ve watched this a thousand times and we’re not making progress.’ We have an unbelievably studious locker room. Like, our guys pay attention and they’re focused on growing.
“It’s super cool, man. It’s really fun to coach.”
Kentucky women’s basketball guard Asia Boone will be returning to Kentucky for her senior season, she announced.
Boone, who was a two-time All-Conference USA player at Liberty before arriving at Kentucky, averaged 10.1 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game this season. She was originally the team’s sixth man and at times, served as the backup point guard to Tonie Morgan, but she earned a starting role later in the season as she started in 19 of Kentucky’s 36 games.
The 5-foot-8 guard is the second confirmed returner for the 2026-27 squad, joining All-SEC First Team center Clara Strack, who will also be a senior this upcoming season.
She was one of two players this season who broke Rhyne Howard’s program record for threes made in a single season. Amelia Hassett finished the year with 99 threes made, setting the new program record, but Boone was just behind her with 96 made threes on 263 attempts (36.5%).
Boone’s highest-scoring game of the season was against Morgan State, when she had 21 points on 8-10 (5-7 3PT). She had 18 points in Kentucky’s win at LSU on New Year’s Day and topped that with a 19-point effort against Texas A&M on Feb. 12.
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Kentucky quickly made its move on Syracuse star transfer Donnie Freeman in the portal, making immediate contact and hopping on a Zoom call before getting a visit scheduled for the following week. The Wildcats emerged as the likely landing spot, fighting off Alabama and UConn for his services — only for St. John’s and Tennessee to throw their hats into the ring and make their own late pushes going into the weekend.
There was serious optimism in Lexington that Mark Pope had batted down those Hail Mary throws by the Red Storm and Volunteers with a potential public commitment coming Sunday, only for the afternoon to turn into evening without a peep. Then came the late-night chatter that Rick Pitino had tossed another deep ball toward the end zone, an offer Freeman couldn’t refuse to ultimately land his services as the No. 19 overall player and No. 5 power forward in the On3 Industry Transfer Portal Rankings. Kentucky had its chance to keep the bidding war alive and potentially flip the momentum back, but the fat lady has officially sung.
That’s a tricky predicament for Pope and the Wildcats, who already passed on Colorado transfer and Florida State pledge Sebastian Rancik to continue their pursuit of Freeman. That came after Magoon Gwath (DePaul) and DeSean Goode (Miami (FL)), two other confirmed targets, committed elsewhere, along with the departures of Mo Dioubate (LSU) and Andrija Jelavic (Ohio State) from Pope’s second roster in Lexington.
So, uh, who is left for the Wildcats? Let’s separate the potential candidates into four categories.
“Gotta make Brad Stevens say no”
Two absolute gems remain at the position and could make all of the Pope Whiff doomers stop in their tracks: Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic and Santa Clara’s Allen Graves. You know both names because Kentucky played each of them in the NCAA Tournament, the former knocking the Wildcats out in the Round of 32 and the latter nearly doing so with a dagger in the final seconds of regulation — only to be topped by Otega Oweh’s half-court miracle at the buzzer.
They’re ranked No. 1 and No. 3 at the position, respectively, and are obvious home-run hits if UK can make contact. The issue? Despite entering the portal, they prefer to keep their names in the draft and will likely do so with first-round guarantees. A return to college isn’t impossible for either — Graves sits at No. 32 in ESPN’s latest draft rankings while Momcilovic comes in at No. 43 — but you won’t even get a meeting without $5M as a starting point, with the bidding likely finishing at or near the $6M mark. Are you ready to back up the Brinks truck? That’s the only option if you want the prized forwards.
Trending the wrong way — quickly
Now, if you’re looking for better value, Saint Mary’s Paulius Murauskas and Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras are both technically available, sitting at No. 2 and 11 at the position, respectively. Kentucky has had exploratory conversations with both players — the latter was seen as a serious target this time last offseason, as well — and the talent is there. Murauskas averaged 18.4 PPG and 7.6 RPG on 48/33/84 splits with the Gaels this season and earned All-WCC honors in each of the last two years. That would do the trick. Folgueiras averaged 8.4 PPG, 3.6 RPG and 2.2 APG for the Hawkeyes, but is most famous for hitting the game-winning three to beat Florida in the NCAA Tournament. Maybe not a can’t-miss superstar, but pretty darn solid for a pivot.
But, heavy emphasis on technically available — because they both have On3 RPM picks in favor of other schools. Murauskas is projected to follow his former St. Mary’s coach, Randy Bennett, to Arizona State, while Folgueiras is expected to land at *sigh* Louisville. They haven’t made public commitments, but the clock is ticking and Pope would have to make up a lot of ground in a hurry.
Both are highly unlikely to wear the blue and white.
Realistic, but not a needle-mover
If you’re looking for somebody solid to join the fold, James Madison’s Justin McBride is the perfect candidate. Standing 6-7, 240 pounds following previous stops at Oklahoma State and Nevada, the versatile forward earned Third Team All-Sun Belt honors, averaging 15.3 PPG, 5.6 RPG and 1.5 APG on 49/40/78 splits as a junior in Harrisonburg. Before that, he averaged 7.8 PPG and 4.2 RPG as a sophomore with the Wolfpack and 2.5 PPG and 1.5 RPG as a freshman with the Cowboys.
Finding his fourth home in four years, McBride is scheduled to visit Lexington this week, he tells Jacob Polacheck of KSR+. That comes after a Zoom meeting with the staff last week.
He’s productive with experience as a journeyman, finally tapping into his potential as a former top-125 recruit out of high school after seeing his role increase as a junior. There is a lot to like there, but the idea was for the Plano, TX native to serve as a complementary plug-and-play backup, staggering minutes with the go-to starter. You absolutely take him, but with the idea that you still need much more.
Potential wildcards
No. 1 recruit Tyran Stokes is trending heavily toward Kansas — and he’s also more of a jumbo wing capable of playing 1-4 more than a true power forward — but the conversation starts there in terms of obvious names to upgrade talent on a roster desperate for upgrades. Whatever it takes if you’re Pope, no matter how unlikely.
The Wildcats have also been involved with No. 15 overall prospect Miikka Muurinen, who is undeniably talented, but there are maturity questions. North Carolina and Arkansas are among those to poke around, but there is a risk factor to keep in mind before automatically connecting those dots.
Pope went overseas to find Jelavic, so maybe that’s the path? It’s possible, but easier said than done when looking for obvious star talent. That was supposed to be the 6-11 forward, coming in with multiple years of eligibility and committing to Kentucky after a single conversation — exactly what you’d want when going down that road. The Wildcats weren’t able to see that process through and there is no guarantee the next international find won’t have similar year-one hiccups.
You also can’t rule out that another wave of portal announcements won’t come over the next 24 hours before things close tomorrow at midnight. Auburn’s Sebastian Williams-Adams is an intriguing option that popped up Monday, making himself available following a successful rookie season on the Plains. He started in 21 of 36 games for the Tigers, averaging 6.8 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 27.2 minutes per contest as a former four-star prospect out of high school.
You’re hoping and praying at that point that something presents itself that fits and elevates Kentucky’s ceiling in 2026-27. Odds are good — and someone will want to take the big pile of cash in Lexington — but no guarantees beyond the options already in front of us.
One thing we know for sure? Kentucky’s starting power forward will not be Donnie Freeman, and the search continues for Mark Pope.
Over the weekend, it was reported that the Kentucky Wildcats and coach Mark Pope had interest in former James Madison forward Justin McBride. Now, per Jacob Polacheck of Kentucky Sports Radio, McBride will take a visit to Lexington.
The report states that McBride will visit with Kentucky on Wednesday, Apr. 22. He had previously stated that he wanted to visit, but had to clear up some transcript issues first. It appears that things are worked out there now.
McBride is a 6’8″, 230 lb forward who has versatility. He averaged 15.3 points and 5.6 rebounds last season, but also made 40% of his three-point attempts, making him the kind of stretch big Pope likes to use. He could start, or be a valuable player off the bench.
Pope needs some recruiting wins, and he needs some depth for next year’s team. Right now, there are still more questions than answers, and Big Blue Nation is getting restless. We will update this story after his visit and more news becomes available.
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