The day after Kentucky basketball’s 77-72 win over the Duke Blue Devils in the Champions Classic, sports columnists John Clay and Mark Story discussed Mark Pope’s first big win as the Wildcats coach.
John: Mark, we were both at State Farm Arena to cover Kentucky’s win over Duke. Did it go the way you thought it would go?
Mark: I picked Duke to win that game by four points, and I thought Kentucky had a chance. But no, I can’t say it went exactly the way I thought it would go. The first half, I thought Kentucky, after it hit its first five three pointers, played its worst half of the season. Obviously, some of that is you’re taking a big step up in competition, but in the second half, I give Mark Pope a lot of credit.
In fact, in my column this morning I wore that I thought Kentucky’s coaching in this game was really effective. He got them settled down at halftime, and I thought they came out and were much more patient with their offense, and actually sort of stayed within their structure of what they try to do. And then I just thought they wore Duke down. A key player cramped up and Duke shot horribly in the second half. And I think a lot of that was Kentucky using a nine-player rotation, maybe an eight-player rotation, mostly in the second half, but I thought Pope wore them down.
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