BYU coach Mark Pope will be named John Calipari’s successor at Kentucky, multiple college basketball insiders reported Thursday. Pope, who played three seasons at Kentucky in the 1990s, has spent the last five seasons with the Cougars and lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last month to Duquesne. Calipari left for the Arkansas coaching vacancy earlier in the week after 15 seasons at Kentucky.
BYU’s NCAA Tournament appearance marked the second time Pope led the Cougars to the Big Dance. CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein reported earlier Thursday that Kentucky had locked in on Pope as its primary target after this week’s decision from Baylor’s Scott Drew to remain with the Bears.
Pope won a national championship at Kentucky in 1996 before playing in the NBA for nearly a decade. After a mandatory redshirt year at Kentucky during the 1993-94 season, Pope averaged 8.2 points and 6.3 rebounds for the Cats during the 1995-96 national championship season, averaging 7.6 points per game with 5.2 rebounds. He was selected in the second round of the 1996 NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers and spent parts of six seasons in the NBA between the Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets.
His first head coaching job came at Utah Valley in 2015. Pope’s teams steadily improved every year, moving up from 12 wins during the 2015-16 campaign to 25 victories in 2018-19. He also led the Wolverines to three-straight postseason appearances (2017, 2018, 2019) and back-to-back 20-win seasons (2017-18, 2018-19). He began his coaching career as an assistant at Georgia during the 2009-10 season under Mark Fox and at Wake Forest under Jeff Bzdelik during the 2010-11 season.
Kentucky’s won four times as many national championships (eight) as the next closest program in the SEC (Florida, two). That’s how large the gap is between the Wildcats and the rest of the competition within the conference. That said, Calipari — the sport’s active leader in NCAA Tournament wins — and his teams have not performed well during March Madness in several years and it’s a bit surprising he’s only captured one national championship in the Bluegrass State despite recruiting at an absurdly high level throughout his tenure.
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Kentucky cares about winning and getting the right guy in place to succeed moving forward was top priority for athletic director Mitch Barnhart. Money will never be an issue at this basketball blueblood. And that’s partly why the fanbase is restless; they care and show it.
Aaron Gershon contributed to this report.
