Mark Pope is the new men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. That’s not a sentence that I thought I would be typing a week ago, but here we are.
The hire is proving to be a bit polarizing. I’ve been a Kentucky fan since I was a child, but sometimes the UK fan base can be a bit much to handle. Pope wasn’t my personal first choice, and he wasn’t Kentucky’s first choice, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad choice either.
One of the biggest knocks that I have heard on Mark Pope is that he has never won a title anywhere. Well, of course not. He’s been coaching at BYU. That school has never been known as a basketball hotbed. But if we’re going to hold Pope to that standard, Kentucky should’ve also never hired a few other coaches – Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and John Calipari. All of those had success, at least for while and won titles.
Pope is the opposite in Calipari in many ways. You will see less 5 star recruits and McDonald’s All-Americans. There will be fewer first round draft picks. On the flip side, you will see a more stable roster and older players. Will that translate to more wins in March? We’ll all find out together.
What I find exciting about Pope is that he’s a Wildcat who will care about the program. He’ll want to win for the University of Kentucky. And any draft night success will be secondary. He loves shooting the three ball and will run a more fluid offense than what we’ve seen in the past. The hope is that he’ll be able to bring in better recruits with better resources.
My biggest immediate concern is Big Blue Nation itself. Pope is coming into a program that will likely have few players left after some go to the NBA and others hit the transfer portal. I’m sure that he’ll have a team, but it may take a couple of years before we get a good look at what a Mark Pope team will look like at UK. Will the fans give him enough time if the team doesn’t win immediately?
Pope helped bring Kentucky a National Title in 1996, so he understands what the program is about. In many ways, he may understand it better than Calipari did. Pope knows that championships are what matters in the Bluegrass. He knows that a team full of NBA players aren’t that impressive when they don’t get out of the the first weekend or the NCAA Tournament. There is the issue that Pope has never won an NCAA Tournament game, but again he was at BYU.
Calipari was polarizing, especially the last five seasons. He split the fan base. Coach Pope deserves everyone behind him. It doesn’t matter if he was your first choice. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t love the hire, but something is wrong if you don’t at least respect Mark Pope.
It’s time for Big Blue Nation to give him the support and time to build the program to fit his vision. If he isn’t up to the job, that can always be revisited down the line. As a lifelong Kentucky fan, I am here for Coach Pope and will give him my support. I just hope others do as well.
