A rash of injuries have the former BYU coach and his Wildcats struggling to stay afloat.
Many years ago, I interviewed Mark Pope shortly after he was hired as the new head basketball coach at BYU. Our conversation wandered into our mutual interest in water skiing and boating, and he told me that his boat had once broken down on Utah Lake.
Instead of waiting for another boat to come along and tow him ashore, Pope jumped into the water and made the long walk to shore, pulling the boat with a rope while trudging through the bottom sludge of the lake — something you can do when you’re 6-foot-10 and the water is only 5 feet, 6 inches deep.
“Never seen anyone do that before,” a bemused park ranger told him.
I used this as a metaphor for the job he faced at BYU, fixing a slightly broken down program. Well, he went on to win many games and, in April 2024, Pope cashed in on his success to win the head coaching job at Kentucky, his alma mater.
He’s now in the middle of his second season and, well, he’s back in the water (stick with the metaphor), up to his neck, trudging through the mud, trying to drag the proud Kentucky program back to its former glory.
It’s not going well. The water is getting deeper and so is the mud.
On Tuesday night, the Wildcats lost to Vanderbilt, but that’s putting it mildly. They were in over their heads (still going with the metaphor here), losing by a score of 80-55. They trailed by 20 at halftime. They had 15 turnovers. Shot 32%.
It was not an isolated loss. Or blowout.
Earlier this season:
Michigan State 83, Kentucky 66.
Gonzaga 94, Kentucky 59.
The Wildcats have played eight games this season against nationally-ranked opponents and won only two of them (No. 22 St. John’s and No. 24 Tennessee).
They are 14-7 overall, 5-3 in conference play.
They were 24-10 last year in Pope’s first season on the job, tied for sixth in the SEC standings.
None of this will do at Kentucky, which has made 17 Final Four appearances and won eight national championships, second only to UCLA.
Pope is taking a beating on social media. Fans are getting restless. Some are already calling for his head.
The Wildcats spent a reported $22 million on this year’s team through NIL player investment and other expenditures, making them one of the most expensive teams in the country and more than double the cost of last year’s team.
They also spent $27.5 million to hire Pope to a five-year contract that runs through the 2029 season. It includes $250,000 annual raises.
There has been little to show for it.
Injuries have depleted Kentucky’s depth — broken feet, broken knees, dislocated shoulders. This has forced Pope to alter practices to avoid more injuries. He uses a nine-man rotation, but in Tuesday’s 25-point loss to Vanderbilt, two players accounted for 35 of Kentucky’s 55 points.
“There are a couple of positions where we’re hanging on by a thread just to be able to function on the court, so we’re trying to take some special care there, where we don’t lose guys in live play in practice,” Pope told Sports Illustrated.
Pope is a nice man, and it’s difficult to imagine that anyone outside of the University of Louisville wouldn’t want him to succeed, but fans don’t care about that when he’s not contending for championships.
For the record, he rebuilt Utah Valley from an 11-game winner the season before he became head coach into a team that won a combined 48 games in his third and fourth seasons.
In his first season at BYU, the Cougars improved from 19-13 the previous season to 24-8, but overall not a lot changed. Pope produced a record of 110-52 during his five seasons at BYU, compared to BYU’s record of 116-57 the previous five years.
Pope’s predecessor at Kentucky was John Calipari, who took Kentucky to the Final Four four times and won one national championship in his first six years at the school, but his teams faded in the following nine seasons. He saw the writing on the wall and resigned before he could be fired and took the head coaching job at Arkansas. He won 22 and 23 games in his last two seasons, respectively, and that wasn’t good enough; Kentucky was ready to move on.
Pope is winning games at about the same rate.
How long can he hang on if this continues?
“We still have some things we’re trying to figure out, you know, with a shortened bench and how we can make those things fit but we’re really optimistic,” Pope told Sports Illustrated. “Despite the diminishing roster, I do think our best basketball is ahead of us … usually when you go through stuff like this, there’s really special stuff at the end of it.”
Next up: It’s Pope and Kentucky v. Calipari and No. 15 Arkansas on Saturday in Fayetteville.
Category: General Sports
