BYU would not hire Pope back. IMO, Pope is qualified to coach WKU. He would be perfect there.
BYU is a lot better than us. Let that sink in
- Thread starter buc puppet
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BYU would not hire Pope back. IMO, Pope is qualified to coach WKU. He would be perfect there.
That’s right. Major red flag when players don’t follow the coach.
Hyperbole. When’s the last time WKU was a 6 seed one year and a 3 seed the next? The 70s?
I think it was more the good first season and record number of Wins over Top-15 ranked opponents that "brainwashed" people, to be fair.
If he'd crapped the bed immediately after the press conference you wouldn't have had a majority of the posters on this board unironically expressing their love for the hire as recently as the days following the Purdue exhibition blowout.
Yeah that's a lot of text. Horrific, losing seasons cannot be allowed to happen ever. 2013, we were 17-7 before Noel got hurt, and had just won the title. Not great, but somewhat understandable. 2009, BCG was immediately fired. Cal should have been immediately fired after 2021. That's my point.
Be careful people don’t like real life perspective around here.
Nonsensical AI slop. Did I log onto Twitter or Facebook by mistake?
If you wanna make a meme mocking Pope, go for it. Just have it actually be funny or at least make sense.
Fans holding gibberish signs. "Mr. Rogers for the angry"? Just photoshop him as Mr. Rogers if that's the joke you wanna go with.
You will see where he ends up in a few years. He was over his skis at BYU. They are glad he is gone.
Just sort of pointless at the moment, as barring a scandal or resignation they're not going to fire a College Basketball coach 8 games into a season.
Even Kenny Payne wasn't fired until the end of his second season.
Year hasn’t gone the way we want, we are all angry. Hell, I’m angry. But we don’t have to be disingenuous. I hope it turns around, we don’t know if it will —- but we can be honest about things. Saying Pope is a WKU level coach is just silly. BYU literally was a mid major every year Pope coached there except the last one. That’s not disputable —- it’s a fact. The one year they moved to a major conference, he earned a six seed. Then, last season when everything went to hell, Pope took portal scraps to a 3-seed and a Sweet 16, the best year we have had in six years. We can both acknowledge this season has been atrocious while also not denigrating the coach with hyperbolic lies that can be easily debunked. Go Cats!
It does seem like BYU does not miss him in the slightest.. and that might have more to do with Kevin Young. But now BYU, with a rich benefactor, can pay players. They have an NBA-level coach. Theyre going to be a player in this NIL era and for football too.
Ignore historical facts, reading 6 paragraphs is too hard, insert personal opinion that doesn’t reflect what the university has done with its coaches over the course of 60 years.
So, emotional response grounded in nothing. Got it.
Also BCG wasn’t fired for not winning enough games. He was fired for cause based on his personal conduct and refusal to sign a formal contract.
We have to be honest about the difference too though. BYU in 2023 was a mid major with mid major resources. It’s now a Big 12 school. I can completely understand BYU fans being happy with Kevin Young, but we are retcon-ing again about Pope. As though we are comparing apples to apples, when we talk Young at BYU versus Pope at BYU. It’s frankly disingenuous.
No one would care about his conduct if he was winning. I dont give a **** about historical context, MY opinion is that a losing season at Kentucky means you get shown the door. Missing the tournament means you get shown the door, barring extraordinary circumstances. The product on the floor right now is wholly unacceptable and it does not figure to get any better. We also have no recruits committed for next year. The guy is a disaster and the situation requires action.
“Doesn’t figure to get any better.” Disagree. Would you disagree we have made improvements on the defensive end? Would you disagree that Oweh is beginning to round back to form? Would you disagree that we are beginning to see the emergence of some of our younger players like Jelavic? Don’t give up the hope just yet.
Yeah, not getting him was the first major red flag that the staff can’t close. If you can’t get a major cog in your previous team then you have issues.
Yeah I would disagree with all that. UNC is not some elite team, and they were without their best offensive player. They got killed by MSU. We were at home. I wasn't impressed with anything about that game. The "improved" defense sure didn't help at the end. Oweh "rounding back to form" sure didn't help when we were going TEN MINITES without a basket. It's a terribly constructed roster full of backup level players, the season will be one long humiliation on national television.
That’s exactly what Devries at Indiana said word for word. I wanted to find offensive guys that I can teach defense too. He literally said I can teach any player to play defense, but I can teach a non skilled player how to score.
I didn’t say anything about UNC being an elite team. Don’t let me stop you if you want to paint everything in the worst possible light. I’m showing you there are signs we are putting things together.
3 million for Aberdeen is criminal. That could have gotten a lot of great freshman out of this class. I like Aberdeen and think he’s in a really bad spot playing out of position with little help right now but his lack of passing and selfishness is bad.
lol, check back after the zags. Maybe we'll pull a rabbit out of our *** but I doubt it.
I expect Gonzaga to win. That’s an elite team and we have a ways to go to get there. But pay attention to more than the score. Watch how we are defending, our effort and improvement defensively. Our offense is bad and we have got to start running it more, but the defense is miles ahead of where they were.
Matt Jones even hinted at that when he announced Saunders was staying at BYU on Twitter.
The Utah Jazz owner who is the biggest donor of BYU wanted Kevin Young and invested more money after he was hired.
Those are just numbers on a page. And while accurate numbers they don’t tell the story.
I’ve been watching UK since Rupp.
I have never seen before a UK play so lackadaisical. I’ve never seen before UK teams so totally unprepared.
I remember the Tubby team that got embarrassed on national TV by Kansas that even had the announcers saying it was not UK basketball.
But Tina total lack of talent. That team tried to win. They played as hard as they could.
That team also set in motion Tubby’s exit.
People want to say Pope has lost this team. No he hasn’t. You can’t lose what you never had.
Last year’s team threw in enough lack of effort games to last a lifetime.
Guys that come here with a reputation of being defenders can’t guard in whatever defensive scheme Pope pretends to run.
Shooting cones and goes. But effort, defense and rebounding has always traveled.
This team doesn’t even pack their bags.
No numbers will ever excuse the product Pope is putting on the floor.
If Pope hadn't of taken the Kentucky job, he would still be at BYU, his love for Kentucky was greater then his love for BYU, the only reason he is not there. NIL hadn't ramped up to what it is now. Do you really think it is a coincidence that BYU is so good now, and not NIL and a billion aire doner, that says he will not be outbid, that has them on the map?
There elite a..ss's just got beat by 40 points, not like we don't have a chance.
yea something about the money numbers being thrown around doesn't add up. Missing on all these players and having this big bank roll doesn't make sense. Now the whole JMI stuff is coming out and we have no details and no other school in the country is doing their NIL like us, everything is fishy.
I was excited when I first heard that we landed Aberdeen because I thought we would use him the same way Florida did: as a role-playing wing.
I had no idea that Pope was instead gonna try to convert him into a point guard. That was a very bad idea. The whole UK Aberdeen experience would be going so much better if the guy was just allowed to play the right position.
Calipari should have been fired after he lost to saint peters, if we're being real.
Is the defense good? Or is UNC just bad at offense? Questions that will be answered tonight.
He only brought Jaxson over from his previous roster.
I wasn’t that surprised though that few followed Pope. Many of the BYU players are married. If BYU offers comparable money and the wife wants to stay, leaving might be a tad difficult.
Pope did what he did at BYU stepping up to the Big 12 in an historically great year. Had a comparable season at UK last year under similar circumstances.
I understand how the pendulum swings. I’m right there with everyone else trashing what he’s accomplished this season (and going back to parts of last season). I join the chorus asking if he is in over his head for THIS job.
But I’m not going to act like he can’t coach or hasn’t done a pretty good job all in all in his career.
This Kentucky job is just big. Takes immense talent to pull it off, and it goes way behind just being a good coach.