Mark Pope is facing an enormous, inevitable rebuild of a team that just couldn’t work together and complete the task at hand. Pope must now embrace his inner Ben McCollum.
The coaching staff at Kentucky is completely changing. Associate head coach Alvin Brooks III is not anticipated to return to the Joe Craft Center, while Jason Hart has officially left for SMU. After a poor 22–14 season, the returning players are holding stay-or-go talks behind closed doors to decide who is truly welcome back and who even wants to be here.
No one in Lexington was pleased with the sudden conclusion of the season, and they shouldn’t have been. According to statistics, it was among the top ten worst seasons in Kentucky basketball history.
In all honesty, it’s perfectly OK for Pope to lose some of the players he once believed would stick around. The previous season’s on-court performance was poor.
Mark Pope needs to heed the advice of a four-time Division II National Champion in order to mend the damaged culture.
The ultimate blueprint for first-place culture
You need go no farther than Ben McCollum to see how a successful culture is created.
McCollum moved to Division I after winning four Division II national titles at Northwest Missouri State. He led Drake to a 31-4 record and an appearance in the second round of the NCAA Tournament right away. Then he accepted the position in Iowa. He now has the Hawkeyes facing third-seeded Illinois in the Elite Eight.
In order to teach everyone how to create a software, McCollum recalled his playing days under Steve Tappmeyer on the Watts Happening Podcast.
“I thought, ‘This is what first place feels like,’ as I sat there during my first practice with Steve Tappmeyer, the best coach I’ve ever met. A first-place culture is like this. “First-place people feel like this,” McCollum clarified.
That served as the final wake-up call for him. He came to see that “first-place people” have some characteristics in common that are impossible to impart. They either possess it or they don’t. It begins with an intense work ethic; they approach practice and play with a sense of competition. Above all, they play and train with an indisputable advantage.
You cannot resurrect a competitive corpse
You can teach a player how to shoot when creating a roster. Players can learn how to slide their feet when playing defense. Even teaching how to perform a sophisticated offensive set is an option. However, competitive spirit cannot be coached.
McCollum used a famous quotation from former Georgetown coach John Thompson to encapsulate this concept.McCollum observed, “You can tame a fool much faster than you can resurrect a corpse.” “We want guys with a little edge to ’em.”
The battle is already lost if a coach has constantly implore a player to put out effort and have a positive attitude. You don’t have any time to truly instruct and help them get better. McCollum actively seeks out “energy givers” and eliminates emotional vampires such as Collin Robinson (ifykyk).
Over time, he found that athletes who lack enthusiasm or are gloomy just do not make it in a successful program. It makes no difference how skilled a player is if they drain the building of its vitality. They have vanished.
That’s how a program, not a roster, is constructed. Last year, Kentucky had a roster.
A do-or-die third year in Lexington
It is hard to ignore the obvious shortcomings of the Kentucky team from the previous season when reading McCollum’s perspective.
The Wildcats lacked vitality far too frequently. On the court, they became irritable and occasionally played with their hair on fire. At other occasions, they appeared to be sleepwalking. When hardship struck, they completely lost themselves in their own thoughts. They may occasionally bounce back, as they did against Tennessee. At other times, like in the final game of the season against Iowa State, they collapsed.
Mark Pope is a terrific offensive player who prefers to play basketball with a very analytical mindset. He talks about focusing on what you can control and letting go of everything else. However, that cerebral strategy entirely collapsed when Iowa State punched Kentucky in the mouth because the team lacked that natural, unteachable advantage.
Iowa State declined to give up. Kentucky gave up. The players at Iowa State were aware of this.
Pope must put competitive spirit ahead of raw, five-star talent as he works through the Transfer Portal to assemble his Year 3 lineup. It’s unlikely that he will be able to attract many of the top players out of high school. In this year’s portal, he must locate the energy providers. Mason Williams is one of the recruits he finds who does it.
He has to locate more tough individuals who won’t lie down in the dark. Under strain, they are unable to crumble.
In Lexington, this year is officially a “prove it” year. It’s time to locate some first-place individuals.
