Pope, Cats Hope to Extend Magical Season
There have been some outstanding coaching jobs in college basketball this season. Bruce Pearl at Auburn, Rick Pitino at St. John’s, Todd Golden at Florida and, yes, Pat Kelsey at Louisville have all had amazing seasons.
But has anyone in the country done a better job that Kentucky’s Mark Pope? Consider the facts.
Pope took the job the second week of April and returned only two walk-ons from last year’s roster. In a matter of three weeks, he built his team using the transfer portal to add nine players while welcoming three high school signees.
From the time he was hired, Pope embraced the expectations at Kentucky. He emphasized that his players would be more focused on the name on the front of the jersey instead of the name on the back.
He brought his new team together over the summer and he used team building experiences so that the players could get to know each other not only on the court, but off. The team assisted on home builds in Eastern Kentucky, spent time at the lake and grew closer together with each experience. Pope admits that the situation was both exciting and scary.
“A roster overhaul is just — it’s really interesting because it’s a terrifying process especially as a first-year coach,” Pope said. “It’s an incredible opportunity also. The terrifying part is that you have zero players on your roster and you’re expected to go win huge. The exciting part is that you get to start from scratch and kind of really hand select every single piece to try and fit together, and so there’s no — you’re not forcing any square pegs into round holes.”
Pope’s positivity makes him a player’s coach, and it shows. Every player on this Kentucky team seems to be having fun and they have all embraced their head coach’s positive attitude. Pope attributes his positivity to something that is very important to him.
“I think that my faith is — a foundational principle is gratitude, and I think it’s really hard to not be positive, not be joyful, not be happy if you work really hard at gratitude,” Pope said. “I mean, if we all take the time in our day to sit down and start listing the things that we could be grateful for, starting from the very basic level, how can we not love life and be so incredibly full of joy and positivity. Because it’s just miracle after miracle, just the fact that we get to wake up every morning.”
Freshman Trent Noah believes that Pope’s methods help the Cats be confident.
“It’s definitely been a growing-up experience for sure, but I think Coach Pope has made it really easy for us,” Noah said. “He’s always instilled us with confidence, even when things weren’t going well, even our players.”
The combination of a well-built roster, along with Pope’s positivity, has led to an amazing season for UK. This year’s Cats have beaten Duke, Florida, Gonzaga, Louisville and Tennessee twice. Playing in perhaps the most difficult conference ever, the 2025 Southeastern Conference, Pope and his team won 10 games in the league and have won 24 overall. Now, Pope has taken the Cats to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2019. And he has done it in re-MARK-able fashion.
Kentucky is the only team in the last 20 years to make the Sweet 16 with zero returning points from the previous season, according to CBS Sports. And now, the Cats will try to continue this magical run in Pope’s first season when they face Tennessee for a third time, this one coming on Friday in the Sweet 16 in Indianapolis.
