Mark Story: Mark Pope's bad week has raised the stakes on the rest of this Kentucky season

Mark Story, Lexington Herald-Leader on Feb 23, 2026

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AUBURN, Ala. — This was the worst week to date of the Mark Pope coaching era at Kentucky.

At a time in the men’s college basketball season when a team needs to be building momentum toward March, Kentucky dropped games to a foe that had previously lost five of six and to an opponent that had lost five in a row.

UK’s wild 75-74 loss at Auburn on Saturday night before a sold-out Neville Arena crowd of 9,121 had more twists and turns than “Bridgerton.”

Kentucky led by nine in the first minute of the second half. The Wildcats trailed by six with 3:35 left.

UK was up three with 18.8 seconds left, and still ahead by one, 74-73, with 14.3 seconds to go.

That is when the game turned on what, at best, was a questionable foul call.

With UK trying to inbound the ball against full-court Auburn pressure, Collin Chandler was called for pushing off the Tigers’ Kevin Overton to get open to receive a pass.

On the replay, it appeared Overton began the play with his arm draped around Chandler. The UK guard did appear to push Overton, but I agreed with ESPN play-by-play announcer Tom Hart, who said on air that it looked “like a routine play for a guard to get open against the press.”

What instead went down as Chandler’s fifth turnover of the game eventually led to Elyjah Freeman’s game-winning follow shot for Auburn with 1.2 seconds left.

The outcome left Kentucky’s Pope fuming, albeit in a passive-aggressive, don’t-get-fined by the SEC way.

“We don’t make excuses. We don’t do that. Regardless of how disgraceful things are, we don’t give away our power,” Pope said. “Regardless of how embarrassing, personal, awful, unacceptable things are, we refuse to give away our power. We refuse to give control to people who are outside of our program, regardless of how personal it might get.”

Of the contested call, Auburn coach Steven Pearl said “(Overton) was in his stance and (Overton’s) back was to me, so I didn’t see the play. But looked like (Chandler) extended his arms, and we got the offensive foul.”

UK wasted a career-high, 29-points performance by Otega Oweh, who almost single-handedly willed the Wildcats to victory.

So just as Georgia snapped a string of five losses in six games by beating Kentucky (17-10, 8-6 SEC) 86-78 on Tuesday night, Auburn ended its five-game losing skid at UK’s expense.

For first-year head man Pearl and the Tigers (15-12, 6-8 SEC), their first victory in February came on the 21st day of the month.

As for Kentucky, with three projected starters — point guard Jaland Lowe, center Jayden Quaintance and wing Kam Williams — sidelined by injury, the Wildcats do not have enough margin of error to withstand bad games by their better remaining players.

While Oweh (29 points, seven rebounds, three assists) came up big at Auburn, senior guard Denzel Aberdeen (15 points, but 5-of-14 shooting) and Chandler (10 points, but 1 of 6 on 3-pointers and the five turnovers) did not have their best performances.

Teams had been shooting 36.5% from behind the arc against Auburn this season. Kentucky, however, managed only 26.1%, 6 of 23.

“I think we’ve had 11 or 12 guys since conference play has started that have either matched their season highs or had a season high in 3-point makes against us,” Pearl said. “Kentucky goes 6 for 23. They shoot like 36% I think, from three, so finally, we had one go our way.”

Even riding a three-game losing skid, Kentucky is not presently in danger of missing the NCAA tournament. The Wildcats entered the weekend No. 30 in the NET Rankings. ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi projected the Wildcats as a No. 6 seed.

With road wins at Arkansas and Tennessee, a neutral-site victory over St. John’s and home wins over Indiana, Texas and Tennessee, Kentucky is still quite likely to participate in March Madness.

What UK may be doing, however, is playing its way onto either the 8- or 9-seed line for the NCAA tournament. That would mean a 50-50 game in the round of 64, followed, if successful, by a likely meeting with a No. 1 seed in the round of 32.

That is not the preferred recipe for a trip out of the first weekend of the tourney.

Contrary to what one reads on the social media sites and Internet message boards, Pope is not coaching for his job this season.

The University of Kentucky is not going to fire an alumnus who is a good person — and who had a pretty good first year as Wildcats head man — after two seasons no matter how poorly the current year ends.

But Pope would give himself a big boost moving into a crucial offseason by finishing out what has been a keenly challenging 2025-26 season with a flourish.

This past week, with the dispiriting losses to Georgia and Auburn, makes that goal more difficult.

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