Mitch Barnhart looks back on hiring 'two really special coaches' in Mark Pope, Kenny Brooks at SEC Spring Meetings

It’s been 412 days since Mark Pope was hired to take over the Kentucky men’s basketball program, 429 days since Kenny Brooks was hired as the women’s coach. We’re past the one-year anniversaries, obviously, but spring of 2024 is still fresh on our minds with basketball in Lexington seeing a total reset. Those hires were made 17 days apart with three weeks of coaching searches leading to two home runs knocked out of the park by UK AD Mitch Barnhart.

Barnhart joined The Paul Finebaum Show at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin on Wednesday to talk about the changes coming to college athletics with transfer portal, NIL and the College Football Playoff on everyone’s minds. In that big-picture discussion, though, Finebaum brought up his two basketball coaching hires and the bang-up jobs they both did in year one leading the Wildcats.

The UK AD was undoubtedly proud of the work they’ve done up to this point while voicing confidence in their futures in Lexington.

“Just two really special coaches, you know? To have the opportunity over a three-week period of time to switch both of your basketball coaches and bring in two guys that are so bright and so thoughtful — they came in and they had essentially no roster and no coaches,” Barnhart said. “What they did from scratch — in the new world you can do that a little quicker, there’s no question about that. And then obviously Coach Brooks brought in a dynamic player in Georgia Amoore, who was so much fun to watch with the team. She made everybody better around her. Then Coach Pope obviously put together a roster that fit his personality and his team.”

Finebaum joked that a book should — and probably is — being written about those coaching searches and how they changed the trajectory of Kentucky basketball, especially on the men’s side with Pope replacing a Hall of Fame coach in John Calipari in what was a polarizing decision at the time.

Barnhart said that time period probably deserves a few chapters written about it in a book at some point.

“The two of them together — they played off each other very, very well. It was a lot of fun,” Barnhart said. “There’s probably a chapter two in the book somewhere along the way for the way it all came together. But, boy, you couldn’t have done it without really, really special people.”

Year two for both can’t get started fast enough.

Mitch Barnhart gives insight into hiring the coaches to lead @UKAthletics Men's & Women's hoops teams into the future #BBN pic.twitter.com/dZF0RuSaIN

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 28, 2025