Kentucky got exposed in its season-opening win over Wright State earlier this week.
Although the No. 23 Wildcats rolled to a 103-62 victory over the Raiders, Kentucky coach Mark Pope wants his team to improve in the rebounding department, especially on the offensive end of the floor.
“We like to be a 30-percent offensive rebounding percentage team,” Pope said. “We’d like to be that consistently. If we could be a 14 offensive rebound per-game team, it would be extraordinary. We’re just not living in that space at all right now.”
Kentucky outrebounded the Raiders 41-32 but managed just seven offensive rebounds and gave up 11 on the defensive side of the floor.
“We didn’t make much progress in the last game, either,” Pope said. “But it’s something we’re really focused on and we will make it, we’re just trying to figure out how to get there.”
Pope said, “ideally we would like to keep teams under 10 offensive rebounds.”
“Those are goals that we’re working on,” Pope said. “It’s very important to how we play, it’s really important to how we play,” he said. “It gives us staying power, it gives us confidence in all of the other things we do. Our presence on the offensive glass and our consistency on the defensive glass is really important for us.”
Kentucky will take on Bucknell (2-0) Saturday in its final tuneup before taking on Duke in the State Farm Champions Classic Tuesday in Atlanta. The Bison will be led by Noah Williamson, who is averaging 25.5 points per game through the first two games.
“(They are a) good team, veteran team,” Pope said. “Guys who have been there together for a long time. They run really good actions and have a good sense of what they’re doing. They have some explosive scorers, they shoot it from all five positions. A good team. It will be another good challenge for us.”
How does Pope keep the Wildcats from looking ahead?
“It's something we practice every day,” he said. “We talk about it before every game. (Bucknell) is the biggest game we've ever played.”
He said the Wildcats approach each game two ways.
“One is it's just the way we go about business,” he said. “Everybody's human. We all can get distracted by all kinds of things. We get distracted by things going wrong and things going right, things in the future and things in the past… We practice this on a daily basis about can we just be here right now? And that's going to also be a determining factor in how good we are as a team is can we be present right now?
He also wants the team to be “intentional.”
“They were fully present in the moment (in the opener),” Pope said. “They weren't distracted by the crowd, the referees, the fans, or the other team. They weren't distracted by what happened yesterday or what could happen tomorrow. They were just right there and doing that forcefully. And so we like to practice that all year — all year long.”
Gametracker: Bucknell at Kentucky, 3 p.m., Saturday, SECN+, SuperTalk 94.3 WKYX, WiLLiE 102.
Kentucky coach Mark Pope wants the Wildcats to rebound better starting with Saturday's game against Bucknell. (Keith Taylor/Kentucky Today)
