Mark Pope Describes Kentucky's New Player Development Opening, But Says 'This is Not the Final Piece We'll Add'

With postseason play set to begin, Kentucky basketball is in the process of adding a new player development position to the staff. The job was posted on Saturday with the title of Associate Director, Player Development.

During his press conference on Tuesday, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope shed a little more light on the position. He said it’s “a really important position for us” and described it as a “back-office position.”

“Somebody that can model for us 24/7. They can do salary cap models, they can do win share models, they can do comparison research in terms of us trying to get as deep into the details of managing this spring’s roster construction as we can,” Pope said. “It’s really important to have somebody that, literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is going to be just war gaming and modeling over and over and over again. We’re excited to have that position. It’s really going to help us as a staff [to] collect information.”

It’s a position that Pope is apparently excited about. If it were up to him, he said it’d be in place on Tuesday.

“I’d like to have it in place today,” he said. “I’m not legally allowed to have it in place today because it’s got to close.”

‘This is Not the Final Piece That We’ll Add’

In recent days, talk of Kentucky basketball adding a general manager has heated up. While this player development role doesn’t fill the role of a general manager, Mark Pope hinted that Kentucky isn’t done yet.

“With the changing dynamics, this is not the final piece that we’ll add,” Pope said. “This is a piece that’s going to make a big difference for us in our information gathering and our analysis of data. It’s going to be massively important for us to make the best educated guesses that we can.”

Pope said that Kentucky has been “playing with” this player development role, trying to find the “time and exactly the right description of the job.”

“I think we’re there right now. I think we have some elite-level applicants that will fill this little niche position perfectly,” Pope said. “I’m excited to get through the process and get this person in-house and have him grinding away.”

KSR+ provided an update on Kentucky’s status in its search for a general manager on Monday. KSR’s Jack Pilgrim followed that up with an update on a name that had previously picked up traction.

Kentucky Making Moves with GM

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