Kentucky’s comeback win over Duke signaled to the rest of college basketball that the Cats could be legit. For Mark Pope, it was just the next step in a sprint to San Antonio.

When asked how much confidence the win over the No. 6 Blue Devils gave his players, Pope said it was further proof of how eager they are to learn about each other and grow into a squad capable of cutting down the nets in April. That’s an especially tall task for a roster that was built in a manner of months.

“Hopefully, our confidence is growing all the time,” Pope said on Thursday. “I think mostly what it gives us is we’re just hungry to grow. You’re going to be so tired of me already talking about humility and curiosity, right, but I think that’s the biggest thing. Just go play again to find out who we are how we can get better and what we can do better and how we grow. It’s a race.

“With a team that’s constructed the way this team had to be, where every single person is new, it’s just a race from our first game on Nov. 4 to hopefully the Final Four. We know we have to get so much better and there’s limited time so it’s just a race to see how fast we can grow. I think that’s the biggest thing that this game did for us, that Bucknell did for us, that Wright State did for us; it just gave us more film and data and experience to try to figure out how we can become a great team.”

For fans, the Wright State game was a storybook start to the season, with Kentucky winning by 41 points, Pope’s jersey number. The Bucknell game showed that the Cats can still put up 100 points on a night they’re not firing on all cylinders. The Duke game was the most promising sign yet, proof that they can battle back from a nine-point halftime deficit against an elite team even when the threes aren’t falling. Just three games in, that bodes very well for the future.

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Kentucky may be in a race against time, but Pope is determined to enjoy every step of it. When asked about the three 2025 recruits that signed with Kentucky this week, Jasper Johnson, Malachi Moreno, and Acaden Lewis, Pope said his current players are setting the standard for what it means to play for Kentucky under his watch.

“I’m telling you, it’s a joy to coach here, and it’s hopefully it’ll continue to be a joy for BBN to watch because we have great young men in this program. I’m talking about, like, elite-level kids, like really special people, and it’s fun. Like, you know, I’ve got to sit next to Otega [Oweh] and Andrew Carr postgame after our last game, and just listen to them answer questions and them talk about what this program is and what it means to be for them to be here. And it’s beautiful, actually. Like, it is.”

The specific moment Pope is referring to is when Otega Oweh told reporters that wearing the Kentucky jersey inspires him to play even harder for fans and his teammates. Andrew Carr, who also had some big plays down the stretch vs. Duke, echoed that sentiment, adding that the team’s close bond is a major reason why they didn’t throw in the towel when the Blue Devils were surging. After Carr finished his thought, Pope looked around the room and said, “Who gets to coach guys like this? Come on, man. It’s awesome.”

“These are kids that are seeing something way bigger than just themselves, right and they care about the right things,” Pope said yesterday. “And it just guys that I want to coach, and it’s the way this should be, and it’s guys that are going to have that are in the middle of tremendous careers, are going to have great, massive professional careers, and then go on do even more important things after that. And that’s what we’re surrounded with in our locker room right now.

“So, that’s the first thing [in recruiting]. Our filters are really high in terms of bringing in great people. We want great people here, not perfect people. Like, we all screw up and make mistakes and do things like that, but people who are actually really eagerly trying to grow as human beings, right? So that’s number one.”

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