NEW YORK -- Following his team's 83-66 loss to Michigan State in the Champions Classic on Tuesday night, Kentucky coach Mark Pope said his "message isn't resonating" with his players and called the Wildcats "really poorly coached."
Kentucky trailed by as many as 24 points late in the second half and suffered its second loss in its past three games after falling to Louisville last week. During Tuesday's broadcast, ESPN's Kris Budden reported that Wildcats players were "barking at each other" during a second-half timeout.
"We're far away from the team we hope and aspire to be, and we can't waste a second on trying to grow into that," Pope said. "We're disappointed and discouraged and completely discombobulated right now."
It took Pope more than 50 minutes after the game ended to enter his postgame news conference, and he almost immediately began to take responsibility for Kentucky's struggles.
"I know there's one team that's really, really well coached and one team that was really poorly coached," Pope said.
"My message isn't resonating with the guys right now," he added. "That's my responsibility."
Kentucky was without starting point guard Jaland Lowe, who has missed the past two games with a right shoulder injury, and projected lottery pick Jayden Quaintance, who remains out following a torn right ACL he suffered in February. Pope was asked whether the injuries were an excuse for the Wildcats' early-season inconsistencies.
"If you build an organization the right way, then your identity is not about an individual person. Your identity is about a collective group," he said. "So it shouldn't matter if we had built a great organization and a great culture, which I've clearly failed to do up until today.
"But we won't fail this season. We just have failed up until today. We will build an organization where we won't be able to be disrupted every time someone steps in and steps out because we'll have a team identity, not an individual identity. Until we get there, we're going to really struggle. That's my job. That's why Mitch [Barnhart] brought me here. I'm doing it poorly. I won't be doing it poorly for much longer."
It didn't initially appear that Tuesday's game would end in this fashion. Kentucky scored the first five points of the game and took a 17-14 lead on a Mouhamed Dioubate dunk with 13:36 left in the first half. Michigan State would then go on a 30-10 run to end the half. Kentucky's 27 points were tied for the fewest it had scored in a half under Pope, and the 17-point halftime deficit was its second largest under Pope.
Kentucky showed signs of life in the second half, cutting Michigan State's lead to 10 on two occasions midway through the period, but the Spartans went on a 13-1 run to put the game out of reach.
The mood on Kentucky's side was in stark contrast to that of Michigan State, which is off to a 4-0 start that also included a win over Arkansas.
The Spartans made 11 3-pointers on Tuesday night, after making just 13 combined in their first three games of the season. Jaxon Kohler finished with 20 points, and Jeremy Fears Jr. dished out 13 assists, the most by a Michigan State player against an AP-ranked team since Mateen Cleaves in 1999, according to ESPN Research. Fears had eight assists and zero turnovers in the second half.
"I thought Jeremy was below average early, and the first timeout we got him out," coach Tom Izzo said. "And after that, I thought he was spectacular."
Michigan State dominated Kentucky on the boards, outrebounding the Wildcats 42-28, including 10 on the offensive glass.
"We know that they have a lot of size on their team from every position, and going into this game, for prep, we knew it was going to be a battle to go up against them on the boards and everything," Kohler said. "Like every position had someone bigger or someone quicker, and we knew that was going to be, as Coach put it, a football game on the hardwood."
The Spartans have been one of the models for retention and development in the modern era of college basketball, bringing back six players who were in the program last season, including three who started games. Four of Tuesday's five starters were on last season's team.
Against Kentucky, that mattered.
"People that are playing for the name on the front of their jersey because they know the name on the front of their jersey, people that care about the place they're at and the players they're with," Izzo said. "I don't give up on the people I got. That's what we call development, and that's what you call working with players. You stick with them, and they stick with you.
"Tonight, it was fun to see some of that come to fruition."