When Mark Pope looked down at the stat sheet after Kentucky’s impressive 78-65 exhibition win over top-ranked Purdue, he didn’t just see numbers from one game. He saw a potential reflection of history, a familiar pattern echoing back nearly three decades.
A championship formula revisited?
“I was sitting in the office... just looking at the box [score] and I was like, man, this feels like my ‘96 team in terms of this point distribution,” Pope revealed postgame. That 1996 Kentucky team, the legendary “Untouchables” on which Pope starred, won a national championship fueled by suffocating defense, relentless depth (playing 9 or 10 deep), and profound unselfishness.