When Kentucky and longtime coach John Calipari parted ways following the 2023–24 season, the rare blueblood opportunity emerged that was expected to have plenty of interest from top coaches and up-and-comers alike.
Baylor’s Scott Drew, Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, UConn’s Dan Hurley and Alabama’s Nate Oats were among the names linked to the opening, which was to be expected given the caliber of those coaches and of the opening—a top-five job in the sport, conservatively.
Kentucky hired BYU’s Mark Pope instead. Pope, the captain on the Wildcats’ 1996 championship team, was an alum who had a solid, yet unspectacular coaching record. He went 77–56 at Utah Valley over four seasons with no tournament appearances before taking BYU to the Big Dance twice in five years without ever advancing past the round of 64.
But Pope was an alum, a national champion at Kentucky as a player, and a coach who had proved he could win with consistency at his prior stops.
But could he win big in Lexington? Was he the right guy to succeed a national championship-winning coach in Calipari?
The hiring was questioned among the fan base when it was made, and the questions have only grown louder now. Fast forward two full seasons later and the Wildcats, who expect championship-level play out of their men’s basketball program, have fallen well short of those expectations.
Year 1 wasn’t as underwhelming as fans in Big Blue Nation expected it to be. Pope led Kentucky to a 21–10 regular-season record, including a 10–8 mark in conference play. The Wildcats reached the SEC tournament quarterfinals and lost to Alabama. In the NCAA tournament, Kentucky reached the Sweet 16 for the first time in six years before being outclassed by No. 2 seed Tennessee.
There were questions, but maybe, just maybe this could work with Pope. Perhaps his teams at Utah Valley and BYU just needed the resources and talent acquisition ability of Kentucky for the 53-year-old to take the next step in his career
But any goodwill that Pope developed with sections of the fan base evaporated quickly this season in Year 2.
Kentucky’s more than $20 million roster (built without a modern college basketball GM) never shot the ball great from three, ranked outside of the top 175 in college basketball in scoring defense, and had games where it had its fair share of turnover problems thanks to the lack of a true point guard following season-ending surgery to Jaland Lowe in January.
The loss of one point guard, especially when building a roster that is among the most expensive in college basketball, shouldn’t be a death knell. But instead of building quality point guard depth in the offseason, Pope leaned on ballhandling by committee, with Denzel Aberdeen, Collin Chandler and others sharing the load.
None of the players was a true point guard though, and the roster snafu by Pope showed up at points during the season, none more prominently than Sunday in the round of 32 loss to Iowa State, where the Wildcats committed 20 turnovers and could not withstand the intense ball pressure of the Cyclones’ defense. In a game where Iowa State was without arguably its best player in Joshua Jefferson, Kentucky appeared on paper to have a fighting chance. Instead, the Wildcats wilted offensively as they had several times throughout the season, fell behind by 16 or more points for the 12th time this season, and were blown off the court in a 19-point rout.
A $20 million roster is not supposed to 19–12 in the regular season. A $20 million roster is supposed to compete for an SEC title, not be an afterthought and expected to lose against the league’s other top basketball brands. A $20 million roster is not supposed to need a half-court prayer to force overtime against a school from the WCC in the round of 64, and a $20 million roster is certainly not supposed to fall short of the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.
As a result, Pope is facing plenty of questions about his staying power entering Year 3 in Lexington. How he proceeds this offseason, from front office staffing to roster decisions made through NIL, will determine if he sees Year 4.
Pope was not the first choice to replace Calipari at Kentucky, and given the unrest in the fan base, the 2026–27 season will need to end with a deep run in the NCAA tournament. Otherwise the longtime basketball blueblood should enter the carousel once again, and move on from this failed coaching experiment with their former national championship captain.
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