Mark Pope built his roster to fix what Kentucky couldn’t do last season. When his team couldn’t guard, they couldn’t win. The Wildcats were soft on the perimeter, disjointed on rotations, and routinely beaten off the bounce. Pope made it clear over the summer: that wasn’t going to happen again.
He went out and recruited defense. He went out and got Mo Dioubate, he went out and got Denzel Aberdeen, and the defense was supposed to be elite. Or at least, he thought it was going to be.
Tuesday night in Louisville, that offseason promise evaporated in real time and his gamble didn’t pay off…