Kentucky walked off the Rupp Arena floor with a 103–67 win over NC Central and a head coach who looked anything but satisfied. The 36-point margin snapped a two-game skid, but Mark Pope made it clear afterward that the victory did little to ease his growing frustration with a team he says is nowhere close to Kentucky’s standard .

“We just have a standard we have to live up to, and we’re not,” Pope said flatly. “And we have to. So we’ll be fighting until we do.”

That message echoed throughout a night defined less by the score and more by Pope’s boiling point . His anger erupted eight minutes before halftime, when a turnover by Brandon Garrison led to a jogging recovery and an NC Central dunk. Pope stormed onto the floor during the timeout, lit into Garrison, and benched him for th

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