John Clay: After the win over Duke, we can look at this Kentucky basketball team a whole new way

ATLANTA — There may be a better way to begin your time as the men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, but I can’t think of one.

Kentucky beat Duke 77-72 on Tuesday night. Kentucky beat Duke. That’s right, D-u-k-e. In the Champions Classic. Before a loud crowd of fine people on both sides in a terrific college basketball game between two of the sport’s blue bloods.

Mark Pope beat Duke on Tuesday night. No, Kentucky’s new coach did not do it by himself. He had plenty of help from a mature group of former strangers who have bonded quicker and better than anyone in Big Blue Nation had a right to believe, much less hope.

“These guys, nobody knew each other,” explained the coach Tuesday night. “Nobody had ever been with each other.”

We didn’t know them either. Certainly not as a group of individuals coming together to form a basketball team. Certainly not as players with the name “Kentucky” stitched across the front of their jerseys.

“I would just say, you wear Kentucky on your chest, and you have to carry yourself a certain way,” said Otega Oweh, who made the key steal from Duke freshman star Cooper Flagg down the stretch. “You know you’re not just playing for yourself. You’re playing for a whole nation. You’re playing for your brothers.

“It’s a dream to play for Kentucky. The fact that I’m here, the fact that (Andrew Carr) is here, I know it just makes everyone play harder. Obviously just wearing a Kentucky jersey definitely makes you want to go out there and play.”

We know these guys now. And after Tuesday, the country knows them, after the way the Cats kept fighting and fighting until finally they broke through to give their new coach an early statement win and make a statement to the nation that this team owns a higher ceiling than we may have first thought.

The Cats’ comeback — trailing by 10 in the first half; trailing by as many as nine in the second half; trailing all the way until finally taking the lead with 10.3 seconds remaining in the game — reminded me of the story Pope’s college coach and mentor loves to tell.

According to Rick Pitino, UK star player Antoine Walker would beg Coach P, absolutely beg him, saying, “Please, please, please take Pope off of me in practice. He’s killing me. He’s making me work too hard. He’s making me practice too hard. He won’t quit. Please make him guard someone else.”

That’s a paraphrase, but you get the idea.

Pope’s players have the idea. They would not quit Tuesday in a game in which most would say Duke was too talented and the season was too young for Pope’s first-timers to have a chance for the win.

Ah, but these Cats are not first-timers. They’re third-timers. And fourth-timers. Even fifth-timers. There are no one-and-dones on this Kentucky team. Experience matters. The Cats didn’t rattle. They didn’t quit. And in the end, their maturity showed through.

As Duke coach Jon Scheyer, himself an alumnus following a Hall of Famer in Mike Krzyzewski just as Pope is an alum following a Hall of Famer in John Calipari, Pope is experienced, as well.

“He’s been a head coach for a long time,” Scheyer said. “Obviously, any time you’re a head coach at Duke or Kentucky, that means a lot to a lot of people.”

And one game does not make a season, but this one game was different. It was Kentucky vs. Duke. It was a coach in his first year in a new job — a pressure-packed job — with a new team, showing the doubters and the curious, and even his supporters, that yes, Mark Pope knows the assignment. He can do the job.

“It’s not about me,” said Pope after he had hugged his wife, while his players waved to the cheering Big Blue Nation as they left the State Farm Arena floor. “This is about us, not about me.”

And Tuesday, this Kentucky team showed us just what this season might be.

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