Mark Pope declares his desire for seclusion, leaving his team devastated
When former Kentucky coach John Calipari announced he was leaving the Wildcats program and joining intraconference opponent Arkansas, it upset the power dynamics in college basketball. Following his departure, UK was faced with the daunting task of replacing a Hall of Famer as the head of its program. To meet this challenge, it hired former BYU coach and Kentucky national champion Mark Pope, a rising star in the coaching ranks, as its next leader. With this “terrific” hire, Calipari thought the Wildcats would have an easy transition to a new era.
Although Pope’s playing career ended long before Calipari moved to Lexington, the coach claims to be friendly with the new head coach and mentioned during the SEC spring meetings that Pope would be a good fit for the Kentucky team.
According to Calipari, “I thought it was a terrific hire,” per Brandon Marcello of 247Sports. “I’ve spent some time with Mark. He’s a decent man. Speaking with me on Friday morning when I was at the Final Four, he expressed his pride in Kentucky’s accomplishments, as he was once a player. I believe it’s a great hire, but at that moment I didn’t know he would be the coach. prior participant. They are aware that they have certain things to do right now. There aren’t any choices. Either you carry them out, or—you know. And from what I gather, they are carrying them out.”
Pope is off to a terrific start in the recruiting process with the fourth-best transfer class in the nation. He increased his haul on Thursday by obtaining a massive portal pickup. Four-star transfer from BYU Jaxson Robinson gave the Wildcats exceptional wing scoring ability when he chose to follow Pope to Kentucky rather than declare for the NBA Draft. The previous season, Robinson, the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year, led BYU in scoring.
That early momentum could help Kentucky maintain its status as a perennial national power in a post-Calipari era. While the Wildcats have not been to a Final Four in a decade, they continuously produced elite NBA prospects under the former coach’s watch and remained an NCAA Tournament mainstay over the latter portion of his tenure.
“I’ll forever be grateful to Coach Cal,” Pope said on College Hoops Today with Jon Rothstein. “I’ll be grateful for what he did at my alma mater at the University of Kentucky. There’s no reason for my heart not to be full of gratitude to him. He’s also one of the greatest coaches to ever coach in college basketball.”
