I expect Kentucky basketball to hire one of the best possible coaches they can find. Not a coach who even Mississippi State would turn down due to lack of success. By the way, Chris Jans had multiple regular season titles and conference tournament titles before getting hired by Miss St.
Should a UK coach
- Thread starter HappyBlue
- Start date
I don't think UK gives you more resources than any other school in the country. I'd say Duke for one and it's not even close. No shortage of others and they don't have the JMI contract language to contend with.
Happy, I’m sad right now. Can’t you just let me ***** and moan for a couple of days?
The *** whippings are piling up. It’s one thing to lose, it’s another to keep getting embarrassed.
Maybe things turn around, but, hard to fault those who are expressing their frustrations.
Theres no UK coach I seen I wanted to succeed more than Pope hes a great guy and Loves UK truly. Waiting a year ..... I dont see it as best option unless he re ruits solely from portal and all mature seniors an 5th year guys he doesnt need to coach up just guide and he has a team leaders like Butler,Carr,Amari,Jax to be leaders. We won't stop many teams but should be able to score with anyone that way . Imo its best for the program to move on after March.
I looked and found that UK at the end of the 24-25 season was ranked 12th and they made the sweet sixteen first year. That ain't too shabby.
The state of UK basketball is now embarrassing, and I am afraid that it won't get any better until major changes are made.
I agree. That’s why he will get a third year, but we have to be legit national title contender at some point and most thought that would be this year. I thought a final four run was possible preseason — probably on me, but I thought we would be much better
He’s just not a good coach and never will be man, doesn’t matter if he hires a gm. He doesn’t know how to coach any defense and his track record proves that. It’s not going to change now either. We’re better off just letting him go after the season. Mitch blew it
You need to get over the fact that players get paid now, it’s not changing. Honestly don’t know why you’re so against it, they deserve to be paid. And Kentucky isn’t the o ly place players are getting paid anyways, so why is it that other programs aren’t struggling? I’ll give you the answer, it’s because mark pope isn’t coaching them. He’s a good guy but he’s not a good coach , I don’t see how you can make excuses for him.
He’s had time to figure it out, other second year coaches have at lesser programs. He doesn’t deserve more time. He’ll kill the program if he gets more time. I mean honestly why do you want to keep him?
Agrer
That's great for last season. I don't demand a national championship, a Final Four appearance, nor even an Elite Eight. However, the current product is just not acceptable and with this team's makeup, I'm not sure it's fixable.
His poor recruiting abilities, consistently getting outcoached, and lack of success at previous stops is extremely concerning to me. I really hope he gets it together soon, because he's an extremely likable guy, he works his absolute @$$ off, and I'm not sure there's a college coach out there that loves their program more than he loves UK.
I wanted Pope to succeed as much anyone and I agree he is intelligent. Some people are intelligent but don’t have common sense and can’t think outside the box.
For example: JQ is the biggest body on the floor. Why would you not post him up on every play? He had months of no contact so he had plenty of time to develop the skills needed to get to the rim. Obviously this was not done and this is only 1 example of simple basics this team does not do.
You learn by constant drilling not by scrimmaging. There so much wrong with this team and it’s January. That’s enough for me to now Pope is the problem.
In 53% of games against Quad 1 teams we've been down by double digits. Process that stat.
I agree 100% with everything you said, its hard to have any faith in your Coach when he stands on the sidelines as our team is getting run out of gym with his arms folded, Silent.
,
Oats shared one of the primary issues with UK offense. When, or if, the ball ever enters the post it's never kicked back out to the perimeter. Poor passing and horrible ball movement all around.
No, shouldn’t have made the mistake to begin with, other second year coaches at lesser programs didn’t
Considering the three biggest dipshit pumpers on this board posted the OP and the first two replies, I’m almost certain they are all the same person.
I figured he did pretty well last year maybe he 'll do okay with this team when the whole team plays together a little.
The best thing to do when you find yourself in a hole? Stop digging!
In my opinion, Pope will not succeed here and things will get worse before they get better. There’s no question last year was unexpected, but Pope hit lightning in a bottle with Brea, Williams and Butler. Those guys were 6th year seniors and last year was their only shot at playing at a program like UK and they all took full advantage of it.
All of those guys motivated themselves and the team was very successful because of it. Pope’s biggest liability in coaching is he simply cannot motivate his players. You simply cannot stand on the sidelines during a 35 point blowout with your arms crossed and your eyes squinted without doing anything - you just can’t. Pope simply doesn’t have the fire, intensity or personality to coach here. BYU was a perfect “middle of nowhere” place for him to be and he should’ve stayed there.
Is this roster less talented than we were led to believe? Absolutely, but they’re not nearly as bad as what we’ve seen. Have injuries played a huge part in our season so far? Without a doubt, but Saturday was the “chance” for us to start fresh. We got completely embarrassed on national tv, yet again, because Pope, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to start the game off “being cautious“ and keep Lowe, JQ and Cam on the bench.
For me, the “Pope experiment“ ended Saturday. You can’t bring a full, healthy, complete roster to Tuscaloosa for your first SEC game of the season and be that unprepared, unmotivated and unwilling to even start or play your best players. It was a total embarrassment across the board and our coach has/had no answers.
In my opinion, Pope will not succeed here and things will get worse before they get better. There’s no question last year was unexpected, but Pope hit lightning in a bottle with Brea, Williams and Butler. Those guys were 6th year seniors and last year was their only shot at playing at a program like UK and they all took full advantage of it.
All of those guys motivated themselves and the team was very successful because of it. Pope’s biggest liability in coaching is he simply cannot motivate his players. You simply cannot stand on the sidelines during a 35 point blowout with your arms crossed and your eyes squinted without doing anything - you just can’t. Pope simply doesn’t have the fire, intensity or personality to coach here. BYU was a perfect “middle of nowhere” place for him to be and he should’ve stayed there.
Is this roster less talented than we were led to believe? Absolutely, but they’re not nearly as bad as what we’ve seen. Have injuries played a huge part in our season so far? Without a doubt, but Saturday was the “chance” for us to start fresh. We got completely embarrassed on national tv, yet again, because Pope, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to start the game off “being cautious“ and keep Lowe, JQ and Cam on the bench.
For me, the “Pope experiment“ ended Saturday. You can’t bring a full, healthy, complete roster to Tuscaloosa for your first SEC game of the season and be that unprepared, unmotivated and unwilling to even start or play your best players. It was a total embarrassment across the board and our coach has/had no answers.
There must be a lot of delusional
There must be a lot of delusional fans out there!!
zero conference regular season or tournament championships. and barnhart hired him to coach here!!!
quote me: if he gets a third year, it will be worse.
Playing from behind in a lot of games last year and now this year is not a good sign that Pope is even qualified to coach at Kentucky. Meet and greet with fans is only one part of the job, you have to win games
Kevin young could he turned byu around in a season and by year two he’s bringing in top rated recruits
Nate oats, golden, those guys went to schools where cbb is a bonus. We don’t bring coaches who don’t know what they’re doing. You pointed to golden. He showed growth every season. And now you can build a team overnight. The problem is pope struck out on all his top targets so we have a bunch of scrubs. And honestly they could be a good team that’s how you know pope isn’t the right guy. This team he comped to the 96 team. The jig is up. Barney’s pathetic tactic of an emotional hire was an affront to fans. It was a slap at kentucky the state. He assumed he could bamboozle BBN. And he has to a certain degree. Pope had no resume other than being captain in 96. The only direction you can run UK bb if you’re deficient as a coach is into the ground. We didn’t stand for it with Bcg but Barney is banking on Kentuckians to be dumb enough to accept another season.
We aren’t Florida where you
Pope is a humiliation for BBN. Kentucky is where you go after you prove yourself. Golden was unproven Florida is that type of school where they want an upstart young coach. Look at fb. The same thing but the other way. We go after the upstart in fb while UF has to have a proven coach. We take coordinators.
And you’re definitely not a uk fan to characterize us that way. It’s been 11 years since we ve been to a final four. Our fanbase isn’t demanding a final four this year we have been demanding that we don’t get blown out and that we are a march factor. How long has it been since we were a legit threat in March??? 2019-2020 seasons was the last real time. I think fans expect a final four by year 3. Not getting your roster together. And year 1 for pope was not a ff caliber team.
Barney wanted to fire Bcg. Bcg was not the Christian guy Barney thought he was. People use the alcoholic excuse to explain his downfall. Pope doesn’t drink so what is his malady to prevent him from winning? It’s his demeanor that’s why and that doesn’t change. Like I’ve been saying popes approach to these guys is how you coach women no young men who we need to become alpha. No alpha coach and it shows in how we play.
The ky whatever are sock accounts. Barney hired a bunch of people. Anyone ok with a third season for pope is no uk fan.
All UK title coaches in the modern era have accomplished a feat in their first ncaat. Every one of them made an elite eight. All 4 of them hall to cal. So this pleasant surprise stuff. Look that stat alone is a testimony to what kind of a coach it takes to win at UK. I think this is the problem l. Uk fans can spot a coaching fraud a mile away. We know what’s in the secret sauce to win. We know when a coach has it. At uk it’s the right fit when we have guys clamoring to play for us. Right now no one wants to play at UK. Hell we had to severely overpay for Aberdeen and others.
He’s making the same mistakes over and over and no last years roster lacked so much mostly toughness. And pope didn’t make a mistake with the roster. He didn’t get any of his first or second choices. Pope gets giddy bc in all reality he doesn’t know what it takes to win at Kentucky. He was so misguided he compared this team to the 96.
And back to this “we could have won it all” bs. No one believes that. We had massive holes. We couldn’t defend a rock. That’s gonna win a title? You can lose a guy or two and still be able to defend. Pope can’t coach defense. That’s his biggest problem. No way in hell that team last year had a shot. Jaxon Robinson and Kerr made us weaker. I’m not buying this garbage sock accounts. Where have they been all season ?
We can only hope that MP opens his mind and allows himself to hear what others (assistants, Pitino, media, analysts etc… ) are telling him.
He wants to do it his way, but his way is not working. Stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room and listen to the common sense others are using. Play your best lineup as often as possibie and use your advantages, we have advantages.
Nothing made sense Saturday. Kam just hit 8 threes the previous game and he’s longer and a better defender than Chandler. Also, Chandler gave up open shot after open shot. Why did Chandler get so much playing time and Kam get so little?
Start your best players and play them as a unit until, one by one, each guy needs a blow. Those 5 guys should go 30+ minutes.
If he pulls the same crap the next game, I'm done saying a nice word about him and I won't he alone.
Lowe
Oweh
Aberdeen
Kam/Mo D
JQ
That’s your lineup, you go with that and use the guys on the bench when you need to, stop jumbling the lineup throughout each game, it's dumb.
This team has no chance to succeed the way he's coaching it.
He doesn't start his best team, he sits there and watches Chandler get torched possession after possession and leaves him in, he played help defense all game long, our perimeter defenders left shooters wide open as they collapsed on ball penetration and he never changed it. There are so many other issues on defense, but you get the point.
On offense, we have absolutely nothing going on but YMCA pickup basketball. Every once in a while we set a series of screens and a guard circles in for a nice layup and sometimes we get a runout, but other than that, there aren't any set plays that I can see, it's just guys trying to go 1 on 3 to the basket and they don't even think about passing.
Lowe and Oweh are very good Iso guys, Lowe is exceptional, but you can't anchor your success to that.
If everything wasn’t sp broken and uncoached, I would feel better about the situation, but this is not something that's getting fixed overnight.
I agree with this thought, yes. I agree Pope did a very poor job constructing this roster. It makes last year's roster that much more impressive. I think last year's roster was about as good as it possibly could have been given the short notice he had to construct it. And we should give him a pass on this season. How could he have known that he would have a group of guys who can shoot, but only in a role player position and only in games where we have a lead and little pressure? This season has been very strange in my opinion. There have been times when this team appears to be a great shooting team. Now, Bellarmine was playing zone the entire game, and they weren't pressuring the ball. So, our guys were passing, zipping the ball around the horn, finding the open man, and they were making shots at a high clip. They did the same thing in several other games, as well, against lesser opponents.
Then you look at games with Louisville, Michigan State, UNC, Gonzaga, and now Alabama and this same group looks like they can't hit the broad side of a barn. My conclusion- these guys can make shots when their confidence is high and there is little pressure on them that the team desperately needs it. But when guys are defending them tightly and we're losing, they melt into a puddle. The entire team is like that. They get behind and they feel pressure and they miss every shot.
So, how could Mark Pope have known this? That's the question. The answer is that it's his job to know. You can't go get a bunch of solid role players (that's what this entire team is made of) and expect them to play like Alpha men who are used to leading while others follow. This entire team is made up of betas. None of them have ever had to lead. Look closely. Oweh wasn't an alpha last season. He played very well at times and took charge at times, almost always in a 2nd half. He never had to lead the team. Chandler never did. Garrison never did. Look at the transfers- Dioubate was a role player. Aberdeen came off Florida's bench. Kam Williams never had to lead at Tulane. The rest of our guys are freshmen. Jalen Lowe is the only guy here who has ever had to lead, and he was trying on Saturday, but then you pass to guys who can't make a shot. Lowe isn't a great shooter, either, as we all know. He's servicable out there shooting, but he could lead a team if the guys he passed to could make a shot.
So, is this all Pope's fault? No. It is his responsibility and it is his job. But I would be willing to give him a pass this season. And I'll add, if he can get THIS team to the NCAA-T, he definitely deserve another season to get it right. I don't think this team will make the Dance.
You're bringing intelligent thought to RR... shame on you... there's no room for that here lol.