KNOXVILLE — It was only one college basketball game in mid-January.
Yet it sure produced two very different news conferences afterward.
Kentucky’s 80-78 comeback triumph over No. 24 Tennessee on Saturday afternoon inside the Food City Center had Wildcats coach Mark Pope lauding the confidence of his team and had Volunteers counterpart Rick Barnes lamenting the inconsistency of his squad. The Wildcats trailed 41-24 with three minutes remaining in the first half and led for all of 34 seconds.
“You don’t just get confidence. You have to earn it,” Pope said. “You’ve got to go do the gritty, hard, miserable work of earning confidence, and you’ve got to take the heat and take the hate. All of us have had a lot of stuff cast on us for sure, and you’ve got to look it straight in the eye and go earn it.
“Things don’t go perfect on a play or for a four-minute stretch or for a half, but they’re starting to earn their confidence through the hard, gritty work that they’re doing and their refusal to give into fatigue or frustration.”