Rick Pitino defends Mark Pope, thinks Kentucky's $22 million NIL payroll is exaggerated

Five games into his second season at Kentucky, the Mark Pope honeymoon is officially over. The No. 12 Cats are 3-2, reeling after a 17-point thrashing by No. 17 Michigan State in the Champions Classic. For the second time in a week, Kentucky has been exposed under the national spotlight, a pill made even more bitter to swallow by players yelling at each other in timeouts and the infamous Louisville pregame locker room incident that continues to hang around the program like a fog.

There’s no bigger indication of this team’s issues than Pope himself, who looked like a dead man walking into Madison Square Garden and in his interviews after. At the end of his postgame press conference, Pope vowed not to fail; for the first time, fans are starting to question if he will.

This morning, one of Pope’s biggest supporters offered his vote of confidence. In an interview with Adam Zagoria, Rick Pitino said he fully believes Pope will “get it going” this season.

“Michigan State made threes, which was very unexpected,” Pitino said, referencing the Spartans’ 11-22 mark from the outside. “But there’s no question in my mind that Kentucky, come March, will be a great basketball team.”

The easiest critique of Kentucky right now is the reported $22 million price tag for this squad and the results thus far. It’s a layup for the program’s haters and those who don’t like the current state of college sports, and could certainly explain some of the issues going on behind the scenes. I think Kentucky fans’ concerns about this team run deeper than the payroll, but that number isn’t going away, especially when the Cats are losing. For what it’s worth, as the head coach of a program that also spent a lot in the transfer portal, Pitino doesn’t believe it.

“First of all, everything is exaggerated,” Pitino told Zagoria. “I hear these numbers, and it’s not proven. Unless it’s proven, it’s not factual. So nobody said the payroll’s $22 million, nobody knows that, nobody’s confirmed that, so people can’t make up numbers.”

“I’m close with Mark, and I don’t believe in these numbers,” he added. “I think everybody exaggerates these numbers. I know they do with us [St. John’s] and they do with every place.”

Of course, Pitino would defend Mark Pope, the team captain of his 1996 national championship team. Don’t forget, the two square off for the second time as coaches in one month in the CBS Sports Classic. Hopefully, by then, the Cats will have sorted some of these issues out, including Pope. There are few people in this world that he reveres more than Pitino. Maybe he should take a page out of his old coach’s playbook to get himself and this team back on track.