Mark Pope shares what Kentucky needs to improve on to get to the next level

What will take this Kentucky basketball team to the next level?

Nov 4, 2024; Lexington, Kentucky, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope yells to his players during the first half against the Wright State Raiders at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. Mandatory Credit: Jordan Prather-Imagn Images / Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

After looking at Kentucky's performance against Wright State, it is hard to identify a bunch of areas where the Wildcats can improve, but not for Coach Mark Pope.

Coach Pope has been adamant for weeks now that his team needs to start pulling down more offensive rebounds. In the blowout win over Wright State, Kentucky pulled down seven offensive rebounds. The Wildcats lost the battle on the offensive glass as Wright State pulled down 11.

Here is what Coach Pope had to say about pulling down offensive boards at his Thursday press conference, “We’d like to be a 30% offensive rebounding percentage team. We’d like to be that consistently. That’s a bad number for our guys because it doesn’t really mean anything. I would love to live in this space. If we could be a 14 offensive rebound a game team, it’d be extraordinary, certainly above 10. We’re just not living in that space at all right now. We didn’t really make much progress last game, either, but it’s something that we’re really focused on, and we will make progress.”

A team like Kentucky that plans to shoot 30+ threes a game would love to be dominant on the offensive glass for two reasons. The first reason is threes lead to long rebounds, which is easy for the shooting team to rebound. The second being more offensive rebounds equals more shots for one of the best shooting teams in college basketball.

Coach Pope is correct that this is something the Wildcats need to work on over the course of the season. If Kentucky can start pulling down double-digit offensive boards per game, a scary team gets even scarier.