Mark Pope's record against Gonzaga isn't great; he can begin to change that tonight

Mark Pope has plenty of experience coaching against Mark Few‘s Gonzaga teams. The two are considered friends and Pope remembers Few waiting to talk with him after one of their head-to-head matchups several years ago.

While coaching at BYU, Pope led the Cougars against Gonzaga a total of nine times in the West Coast Conference, although his team only came out as the victors once. Pope also coached Utah Valley State against Gonzaga once in a buy game during the 2016-17 season-opener, but it was again another loss to the Bulldogs.

That puts Pope’s overall record against Few at 1-9. Granted, Gonzaga has been a juggernaut for roughly 25 years now. Few has coached the Bulldogs to a 90.6 percent winning clip against conference foes since taking the job in 1999-2000. But Pope can begin to flip that losing narrative tonight in year one of his third head coaching stop. Pope’s No. 4 Kentucky Wildcats are in Seattle for a Top 10 showdown with Few’s No. 7 Gonzaga Bulldogs with tipoff set for 10:00 p.m. EST on ESPN2.

“He puts together incredible teams, incredible product. Every single year. He’s so good,” Pope said of Few on Thursday. “He’s got a really distinctive style. They know exactly who they are. You could almost take the names off the jerseys, and you would know if you’re watching a Gonzaga team by the way they play. They win. So it’s going to be an epic adventure.”

Let’s take a bit of a closer look at how these head-to-head matchups have gone for Pope against Gonzaga. We’ll ignore the 92-69 loss while he was coaching at Utah Valley State and instead stick with just the BYU contests. The Cougars and Bulldogs met at least twice each season from 2020-2023 before BYU moved to the Big 12 in 2023-24.

• Jan. 18, 2020: 92-62 L @ Gonzaga
• Feb. 22. 2020: 91-78 W vs. Gonzaga
• Jan. 7, 2021: 86-69 L @ Gonzaga
• Feb. 8, 2021: 82-71 L vs. Gonzaga
• March 9, 2021: 88-78 L vs. Gonzaga (WCC Tournament)
• Jan. 13, 2022: 110-84 L @ Gonzaga
• Feb. 5, 2022: 90-57 L vs. Gonzaga
• Jan. 12, 2023: 75-74 L vs. Gonzaga
• Feb. 11, 2023: 88-81 L @ Gonzaga

In short, it hasn’t always been pretty for Pope’s BYU squads. Across the nine matchups with Gonzaga, Few’s teams outscored the Cougars on average 87.7-74.1 — that’s an average margin of victory of 13.6 points for the Bulldogs. The worst defeat was a 33-point loss in Feb. 2022 while the closest was a one-point loss in Jan. 2023.

Pope’s lone win against the Zags came at home in his first season in charge of the Cougars. That Bulldogs team entered with a 27-1 mark and was led by a handful of future NBA players. BYU came in with a 22-7 record and was fueled by 28 points and 10 rebounds by Yoeli Childs. Had there been an NCAA Tournament in 2020 (COVID took that one away), Gonzaga would have been a one-seed. BYU would have earned a high seed as well. It was a staple win for the program at the time.

Pope and Few met just once in the WCC Tournament, which also happened to be the title game. Gonzaga was undefeated at the time and nearly ran the table before Baylor took them down in the NCAA Tournament championship game. This was arguably the best team Few has ever had at Gonzaga and Pope had them on the ropes for most of the game. In fact, BYU led 53-41 at halftime before the Bulldogs mounted a massive second-half comeback.

These games haven’t always been close, but Pope’s teams showed the ability to compete with Gonzaga despite a serious talent disadvantage. That’s not exactly the case anymore now that he’s coaching Kentucky. The talent level on both sides will be similar. Tonight’s game will be much more of a fair fight than the previous several years.

Remember, Kentucky and Gonzaga are currently scheduled to play one another every season through 2027-28. After tonight, three more games in this series remain. Pope can finally begin to stack some wins against a program that’s had his number. But it starts by bouncing back from a loss to Clemson earlier this week and beating a very good Gonzaga team that enters as the betting favorite.