Mark Pope feels shift on recruiting trail ahead of Year 2 at Kentucky

Although it fell short of his very high expectations, Mark Pope’s first season at Kentucky was a success. He took the Cats back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2019, tied the NCAA record for wins against AP Top 15 teams (including some of Kentucky’s top rivals), and pumped life back into a weary fanbase. Year one also paid dividends on the recruiting trail, giving top prospects an idea of what the Pope era at Kentucky might look like after 15 years with John Calipari at the helm.

Fresh off back-to-back recruiting weekends, Pope was asked how the perception of the program has changed since this time last year. Pope admitted that last summer, his pitch was met with some hesitancy as players debated joining a team built from scratch to play for a coach with only one year of power conference experience, zero NCAA Tournament wins, and zero NBA Draft picks.

“Last year, the question was, when we first got here, ‘Who am I going to play with?’ So that was the overwhelming question. And then the second question, just the underlying kind of thing, was, ‘What’s it going to be?’ I mean, you’re coming in here with nothing to show after a Hall of Famer left, right? And so, some people were brave enough to address that head-on, and some people just, it was an underlying kind of vibe that you just knew that you had to hit hard.”

Those players who were brave enough to sign on for year one of the Mark Pope era overachieved and provided a sample size of what the future may look like. Now, recruits have on-court proof of Pope’s system in the form of a Sweet 16, signature wins, and two NBA Draft picks, Koby Brea and Amari Williams, neither of whom was considered a serious pro prospect a year ago.

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That shift in attitude was immediately apparent this spring as Kentucky started hauling in stars from the transfer portal, most notably Jayden Quaintance, the former five-star prospect who originally committed to UK under John Calipari and reopened his recruitment when Pope took over. More than once, Quaintance has said that after watching Pope and the Cats from afar, he liked what he saw, enough to leave Arizona State, where he was named to the Big 12 All-Freshman and All-Defensive teams. He’s the top pro prospect in what many have called the best transfer portal class in the country. Mark Pope’s second roster also features four returning players, including preseason SEC Player of the Year candidate Otega Oweh; four-star high school recruits Jasper Johnson, Malachi Moreno, and Braydon Hawthorne; and Croatian stretch forward Andrija Jelavic.

When it comes to the next class of Cats, the word is out that Kentucky backs up. Kentucky has yet to land a 2026 commitment, but is firmly in the mix for several stars, including the No. 1-ranked player in the class, Tyran Stokes, buzz that intensified last weekend at the Peach Jam.

“I think that’s so different now,” Pope said of what he’s hearing on the recruiting trail this summer. “I think that the feel here is that we’re squarely in the process of accomplishing special things here; I think that’s generally the vibe. And I think that people have faith in Kentucky basketball, and that’s the way it should be, and it’s always been.”