Kentucky’s Mark Pope joins in on bit of SEC being a .500 conference: ‘Really disappointing start’

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Each week the Southeastern Conference proves to be a juggernaut and one of the deepest conferences in men’s college basketball, as highlighted by the six teams projected to receive a top 16 seed (and three as No. 1 seeds) in the NCAA Tournament.

But the league is only .500 in conference play since Jan. 4 — as referenced poorly by ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech on Tuesday during the Texas-Alabama broadcast on ESPN. So where’s the math?

REQURIED READING: Should Mark Pope shorten Kentucky basketball rotation? He’s sticking to his plan. For now.

It’s something that Kentucky men’s basketball coach Mark Pope appears to be looking to answer, as he joined in on the bit during his media availability on Thursday ahead of Saturday’s game at Texas.

“I think it’s been a really disappointing start to conference play,” Pope said in a joking manner, which brought out laughs in the media room. “I feel like we are not living up to the expectations just being at .500 as a conference.”

There’s been a lot of talk about the SEC being the best conference in college basketball, but the league is still .500 since the start of conference play.

I asked Mark Pope about it to get to the bottom of this. pic.twitter.com/cPj4qBUSwQ

— Jacob Polacheck (@PolacheckKSR) February 13, 2025

As previously reported by The Tennessean, the bait and reference of the SEC being a .500 conference started by a user on X (formerly Twitter) back on Jan. 4 when that user tried to point to ESPN’s “SEC bias.”

“Wow. The ‘best conference in the history of college basketball’ is 54-54 since January 4th. ESPN once AGAIN showing their SEC bias for some teams that can’t even get above .500,” the user’s tweet read.

So with just a few weeks left in the regular season before the SEC Tournament at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, Pope believes the SEC will figure it out before the postseason — continuing to prove that he hasn’t taken the bait that Ravech took.

“I’m kind of looking around the programs in the league and be like,…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/kentuckys-mark-pope-joins-bit-204315810.html

Author : The Courier Journal

Publish date : 2025-02-13 20:43:00

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