4-Point Play: Mark Pope understands initial skepticism, plans to win fans over with No. 9

Mark Pope just wrapped up his first full week on the job and enters week two with his eyes on building a championship-level staff and roster in year one at Kentucky. That’s already underway with Collin Chandler, Amari Williams and Travis Perry making up three of 13 scholarship pieces, along with Cody Fueger and Jason Hart announced as assistants with Pope making a push for Baylor’s Alvin Brooks III to round out the top three.

What’s on his mind at this point as things are finally coming together with the honeymoon period wearing off? He joined The Paul Finebaum Show and The Jim Rome Show on Monday to talk through the hiring process, his grand entrance at Rupp Arena, roster construction and title expectations from day one.

Let’s break down the important notes today on 4-Point Play.

The easiest ‘yes’ of all time

When you win a national championship as a player, it doesn’t take much convincing to return home to coach your alma mater — certainly not at a place like Kentucky. It’s the biggest job in college basketball, so when that call came from Mitch Barnhart, Pope didn’t even let him finish getting the words out of his mouth before responding with a loud yes.

“Not a lot (of convincing),” he told Finebaum. “Mitch — all that he said was, ‘Mark, this is Mitch Barnhart and I’d like to talk to you about the…’ and I was like, ‘Yes!’ And then he said, ‘Well, we’re not sure we want you yet, let’s have a conversation.’ That’s not exactly how it happened in real time, but that’s what happened in my heart, for sure.”

That led to a formal interview where Barnhart explained where things stood and an official job offer came, giving Pope time to think things over with his family before returning with a final answer.

As you can probably imagine, not a ton of thinking was necessary there. Pope, his wife, Lee Anne, and four daughters were all in.

“Mitch was incredibly generous, we kind of went through the very thorough, but very quick interview process in terms of the magnitude of the opportunity. And then Mitch gave me a little bit of time to gather — I have four daughters that are everything to Lee Anne and I, they’re all kind of pursuing their own great adventures right now,” Pope said. “We had a couple of hours to gather everybody from their respective locations and meet together as a family with Lee Anne and everybody got to put in their two cents.

“Each of the girls had their own heavy opinion, but it was a clearly unanimous decision that this is what we would do. In a million years, we would never walk away from this opportunity.”

Question his qualifications? It’s OK, he did too

The first run of initial feedback was not overwhelmingly positive on Big Blue Nation’s side, to put it lightly. Just a few hours removed from being turned down by Baylor’s Scott Drew and UConn’s Dan Hurley, finalizing a deal with a guy with zero postseason wins to replace John Calipari, who left because his own recent postseason shortcomings had created a toxic situation in Lexington, seemed shortsighted on Barnhart’s part — a panic hire, if you will.

Pope understood the skepticism and didn’t take any of it personally. Again, he’s been there. He knows what’s important to this fanbase and that his resume doesn’t include some of those things just yet.

It’s his job to change that here, a challenge he embraces.

“It’s interesting because you talk about who’s qualified to be the head coach of the University of Kentucky, and if you ask me or any former player and everybody in the fanbase, you would say, ‘They better have at least five national championships under their belt,’ because that’s what this job is. Clearly, that’s not on my resume,” Pope said. “This is a process that the University of Kentucky hasn’t gone through in 15 years so that was a really important part for the state and Kentucky fans everywhere to kind of digest what was happening.”

That’s what made the moment inside Rupp Arena so special. Even with the surface-level concerns right away, fans quickly bought in and showed overwhelming support by not only selling out Rupp, but having 5,000 people turned away at the front door.

Divided in the final years of the Calipari era, the fanbase had finally unified and rallied around one common goal with Pope leading the charge. It was a special moment, one the new head coach will remember for a long time.

“You (have) our press conference — if you can call it that. I’ve never seen anything like that in the history of sports, anywhere in the world. And that really had very little to do with me,” Pope said. “That was BBN, that was Big Blue Nation, the Kentucky faithful getting together and telling the world just how important and relevant and massive this program is. It was all of BBN getting together and saying, ‘This is our team’ in a way that doesn’t exist at any other college program. And it was brilliant.

“The opportunity to do that with my teammates and every single one of the fans in there, the 100,000 fans that were watching live was incredibly special. It’s just a testament to what this job is all about. This team is not mine, it’s not even our players’ really. This team is the state of Kentucky’s and BBN’s, that makes it really special.”

Pope feels he owes No. 9 to Big Blue Nation

Talking the talk is the easy part, now he knows it’s time to walk the walk. He’s overwhelmed by the support he’s received since the dust settled on his hire, that day at Rupp Arena obviously the peak of that excitement. It’s helped him understand just how massive this opportunity is for him — and just how important it is for him to capitalize.

“It’s mostly humbling. When you’re at the epicenter of that, you can’t help but understand the magnitude of what this program means to each one of these fans and the significance it has in their hearts,” Pope said. “There’s this sense that you just recognize your responsibility of being a great steward of Kentucky’s basketball team. In a personal family sense, it was the greatest display of southern hospitality in the history of the world. My girls, my four daughters, they’re my whole heart.

“For them to be able to walk in and just be embraced by Big Blue Nation was super special. I love this state, I love the people in this state, I love this program so much. You would think it’d be impossible to feel that more deeply, but I certainly do now.”

He helped bring No. 6 to Lexington, that ’96 banner one of Kentucky’s most prized possessions. Now he feels he owes banner No. 9 to the fanbase, looking to hang that inside Rupp Arena sooner rather than later.

“The responsibility that comes with that is to help grow on the incredible success we’ve had and get to No. 9 as quickly as possible, that’s real,” he said. “We want to do that for Big Blue Nation and for this state.”

“If you want to run from that standard, don’t come here.”

In a follow-up interview with Jim Rome on Monday, Pope doubled down on his championship expectations in Lexington, running through the list of former coaches he’s following in Lexington that helped set that standard.

It’s on him to continue that standard moving forward.

“That’s the standard here, right? If you want to run from that standard, don’t come here because that’s the standard. That’s what BBN expects, that’s what Kentucky tradition expects, that’s what every great player that’s been here over the last hundred years expects,” he said. “We’re embracing that expectation fully and we’re trying to carry on a legacy. Listen, Cal left an incredible legacy here. Tubby Smith left an incredible legacy here — he came in and won his first one! Obviously, I got to be a part of Coach Pitino, what he did here. Before me was Joe B. Hall. You just think about the legacy of Kentucky basketball, we want to carry that on and continue to build on that.”

How does he plan to do that in year one? That’s currently underway in terms of roster construction, recruiting portal and high school talent with similar goals that extend beyond NIL dollars and pro success. Pope wants to bring in players who get what it means to be at Kentucky and wear the blue and white.

Among them? Four-star guard Collin Chandler, who was officially announced on Monday. There is more where that comes from, as well.

“We’re going to do it the way that college basketball is dictating right now. Right now, we’re being incredibly active in the transfer portal. We’re going to have some veteran leadership on this team. We’re signing superstar young players just today — we’re allowed to talk now about Collin Chandler, who is one of the great talents in all of college basketball, young talents,” Pope said. “He’s just returning home from a church mission. It’s going to be everything between. Mostly, it’s going to be guys that are willing to come here and understand what it means to wear the Kentucky uniform and understand that this is bigger than themselves.

“That’s going to be a pathway for guys to hang banners, it’s going to be a pathway for guys to go have incredible careers in the NBA, it’s going to be a pathway, most importantly, for guys to build a legacy at the greatest basketball program in the country. I’m so happy to be able to say that. It’s so fun.”

.@CoachMarkPope on embracing the National Championship expectations at @KentuckyMBB. pic.twitter.com/nh57gtMpfV

— Jim Rome (@jimrome) April 22, 2024