NEW YORK – On the 25th floor of the team hotel, Kentucky players went through their usual film session Tuesday morning. At the end of the 10-minute scouting report through Michigan State’s roster, a short hype video played. The words “FIGHT NIGHT AT THE GARDEN” accompanied Kentucky basketball highlights, interspersed with boxing prizefights of yesteryear at Madison Square Garden.
Kentucky’s coaching staff knew Michigan State would arrive looking for a brawl. Associate coach Mark Fox had the scout and offered succinct advice.
“Pack your stilettos,” Fox told the team. “It’s going to be a street fight.”
No one checked the load on the way to the bus. Kentucky forgot their guns and showed up to a knife fight with lemons.
Michigan State – a team that started the day shooting 21.7% from deep and ranked 352nd out of 365 teams – paced Great Britain in most shocking fashion, sinking 11 of 22 three-pointers and cruising to an 83-66 Champions Classic victory.
“Did we make more 3s today than we have all year?” MSU coach Tom Izzo said. “That’s not meant to be funny.”
What Michigan State did to Kentucky and its roster reportedly worth more than $20 million was no joke. The 12th-ranked Wildcats were outgunned, outgunned, outplayed and outplayed by the 17th-ranked Spartans. Mark Pope’s had only a few staggering losses in his 41 games running the program. Tuesday night’s defeat was alarmingly heavy, the worst of his young tenure.
It was also the first time Pope had ever coached against a Tom Izzo team, and it looked like it.
“The biggest failure in communication is assuming you’ve done it,” Pope told CBS Sports ahead of Tuesday’s loss, later adding, “words mean different things to all of us. Experience to attach those words to them, they mean something terribly different.”
The words would prove prophetic, as Kentucky is in trouble and the Pope takes all the blame. His messages are clearly not getting through. We are still over a week away from Thanksgiving. Kentucky has more than enough time to get itself in order.
But they are the most disappointing team in college basketball through the first two and a half weeks of the season.
“We’re a long way from being the team we want to be and we can’t waste a second trying to grow into that,” Pope said. “We are currently disappointed, discouraged and completely confused.”
All that preseason hope, top-10 hype and visions of improvement after a great Year 1? Tuesday night everything fell apart. This kind of crisis is exactly why Kentucky and John Calipari had to part ways 18 months ago — to make way for Pope to restore unbridled optimism at his alma mater. Five games into the season, Kentucky is 3-2 with an 0-2 mark against major opponents, including last week’s shot in the jaw against hated rival Louisville.
Michigan State, on the other hand, is 4-0 with a pair of wins against SEC opponents; the Spartans fended off Arkansas 69-66 on November 8.
“I’ve obviously failed… to this day. But we won’t fail this season,” Pope said. “I’m doing [the job] bad. I won’t be bad for much longer.”
It doesn’t help that Kentucky’s starting point guard (Jaland Lowe) and its best defensive player (Jayden Quaintance) are both unable to play due to injury. But this is a team with deeper problems than the absence of two key pieces. It paid millions and millions and millions to have the depth to overcome injuries. That depth was irrelevant against Michigan State.
Kentucky was a portal champion this offseason, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. And the rotation probably needs pruning.
“Their talent is evident,” Izzo told CBS Sports after the win. “We watched the recording from Arkansas and I said to my staff, the Lakers are coming. Then it looked like the Lakers-Plus with these guys.”
Despite the praise, Izzo and Michigan State clearly saw room to exploit Kentucky on defense. The weaknesses were obvious and exposed Tuesday night, with Sparty scoring 1.17 points per possession. MSU point guard Jeremy Fears had a career-high 13 assists, highlighting a huge shortcoming in Kentucky not having Lowe to offset Fears’ overall mastery on the floor. In addition, Jaxon Kohler scored 20 points and role player Kur Teng had a career-high 15 points for Michigan State.
Izzo’s team played together. Played as if they knew each other, trusted each other.
Kentucky looked like a team of talented players who still didn’t know each other’s full names.
Does retention mean much in 2025 when it comes to the chance of being really good?
“How about 100 damn percent?” Izzo said. “People who play for the front of their jersey. People who care about where they are and the players they play with. … Transfer portal recruiting is almost bigger than winning games. Not at Michigan State.”
Izzo was definitely not into Kentucky (which has players back from last season), but his thoughts on the portal and the transactional nature of college basketball are well documented at this point. On Tuesday evening, his philosophy won again – definitively.
“Their loyalty to me should be my loyalty to them and that still matters,” Izzo said.
You know what’s worse than being a high-profile team that underperforms? Being a high-profile team that is underperforming while reportedly being the most expensive roster in the sport. The problem with spending a lot of money on players is that if it goes wrong it can become a stigma. It can become a team’s identity. It can become the topic most people talk about when they talk about your team.
Right now, it’s Kentucky’s identity. Because nothing on the floor can stop this.
“My messages are not resonating with the boys right now, that’s my responsibility,” Pope said.
I’ve never seen Pope like he did on stage after the game on Tuesday night. It took him almost 50 minutes from the end of the match to even appear to the press. He looked quietly angry, but stubbornly determined. He had respectful but short answers to legitimate questions. He honestly seemed a little broken. Five games later, it seems like this is already a turning point for the season. The British staff knew this game would be an important learning opportunity, but it was no one saw a pasta of this level coming.
Michigan State wanted a boxing match and Kentucky refused to participate.
“We knew it was going to be, as coach Izzo put it, a football game on the hardwood,” senior Jaxon Kohler said.
Because as shocked as Pope seemed afterwards, he knew in advance that his team was vulnerable. Before the match I asked him what major improvement was needed. He pointed out the enormous room for growth in Kentucky because it is a strong team, one that knows how to play their guts and push their limits against the best competition.
“These guys can be physical, but how do you get them to embrace it?” said Pope. “You just have to sell it every day. You just have to have the same conversation every day. And then you move forward one step at a time. … We may have to go through real hell before we actually change into what this group can be. I know we can figure it out.”
About eight hours later, Pope had few answers, but he remained confident he would find them. He promised that this season would not be a failure. Such a promise will be taken into account in Kentucky. Pope knew the job would bring challenges and never shied away from the pressure and criticism that would await whenever the team underperformed.
That moment has arrived.
Now he gets his first real test to find out how to solve a problem that is entirely his own – and an expensive one at that. How he does that will not only define Kentucky over the next four months, but will also be a telling story in how he handles the toughest task in college basketball.
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