The Kentucky Wildcats are in the SEC, and the SEC plays aggressive basketball. This team will need to rebound well, and Mark Pope, who was a big man himself, wants to implement a strong will to get on the glass.

Pope’s Cats won their first game of the season 103-62 Monday, but they didn’t quite have as dominant showing as many would’ve expected, despite winning by 41. The Cats had just 34 defensive rebounds and seven offensive rebounds.

Wright State, although it had far more opportunities given its field goal percentage (35.3%), had four more offensive boards. Pope envisions that flipping moving forward as he wants a team that crashes the glass.

“We’d like to be a 30% offensive rebounding percentage team. We’d like to be that consistently. That’s a bad number for our guys, because it doesn’t really mean anything. I would love to live in this space. If we could be a 14 offensive rebound a game team, it’d be extraordinary, certainly above 10. We’re just not living in that space at all right now. We didn’t really make much progress last game, either, but it’s something that we’re really focused on, and we will make progress,” Pope said during a Thursday press conference.

That’s certainly a possible expectation as well. They have the size in players like Andrew Carr, who came from Wake Forest and stands 6-foot-11. He’s capable of using that size to dominate the glass. 6-foot-10 Brandon Garrison should be able to do that as well.

Moving forward, the expectations are high for this team, and being able to get those second-chance opportunities should be drastically important which is why Pope is stressing it this early in the 2024-25 college basketball season.