Mitch Barnhart on Mark Pope's ability to recruit: 'It's about the name on the front'
The Kentucky Wildcats shocked the college basketball world recently when they decided to bring in their replacement for John Calipari. UK AD Mitch Barnhart decided to bring in former BYU head basketball coach Mark Pope, a man who was a team captain on the Wildcats’ 1996 National Championship roster.
Plenty of Kentucky faithful have doubts about his ability to lure top-tier talent to Lexington. On Friday, KSR’s Matt Jones spoke with Mitch Barnhart, allowing him to address those concerns.
Can he bring in the players that could potentially lead the Wildcats to a national crown?
“Well, I think the proof’s in the pudding. Obviously. We’ve gotta go get that done. So, we got off the phone last night and he already talked to me about some players that he couldn’t get to come. That had a conversation with him at BYU that called him back and said, ‘Coach, I’m coming to Kentucky,’ Barnhart explained.
He let everyone know just how powerful of a brand the Kentucky Wildcats brand actually is. And he dove into some numbers to back him up.
“So, it’s about the name on the front. It’s about the name on the front of the jersey. Alright? And there’s something about that brand. So, if you go back and you look at just in the social impressions. From Monday at 3 o’clock until Tuesday at 3 o’clock. The University of Connecticut won the national championship. Obviously. And they had 17 million impressions in that 24-hour period of time,” Barnhart said.
“Kentucky basketball is coming off something where everyone agrees where we not want to be. In that same period of time, we had 37 million impressions. We were double. So, my point is, the brand is real. And it is really, really important. And we’ve gotta effectively use it. And we use it, we combine some things in recruiting with the tenacity of recruiting, a staff in recruiting, the brand that we have, and then the NIL space,” the Kentucky AD explained.
Major Kentucky donors have stepped up to the plate
Speaking of NIL, the Wildcats have had some major donors step up to the plate to donate big-time money. “And we’ve gotten some people that have already stepped up in the last 24 hours. We’ve got several donors that stepped up to put over $4 million in our NIL portfolio for coach to work with,” Barnhart said.
Matt Jones asked Barnhart to confirm that number, which he did in the interview. “I can confirm that’s true,” Barnhart replied.
“So, that’s hugely important for us as we go forward, obviously, in terms of roster management of the current roster. As the roster management going forward. Everyone talks about that these are weird conversations. This is stuff we’ve never really talked about on the air before. It’s new. And it’s real. And so, that is part of our deal. And we continue to move forward. We’ve got more coming. If people want to get involved , we can tell them how to do that [through] our avenues,” the Kentucky athletic director explained.
One thing is for certain, Pope and the Kentucky basketball coaching staff will be busy putting together a roster this offseason, figuring out which players will return to Lexington, and what positions they’ll need to address in the portal. It’s the same problem that every other coaching staff in the country has to figure out every year with the transfer portal.