When Mark Pope was announced as the head basketball coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, the response from Big Blue Nation and college basketball fans was mixed. Some thought it was a home run hire, while others thought he wasn’t ready for this type of job. Now, Pope hasn’t even been in Lexington for a full year, and everyone agrees this was the perfect hire for the most historic program in college basketball.
Coach Pope got to Lexington and had to put a roster together via the portal in a very short period of time. This roster is full of veteran college basketball players from all over the country, and this team already has won five top 15 games in only 17 games.
Based on everything Coach Pope has done in his short time in Lexington, there is absolutely zero reason why he shouldn’t be the current front-runner to win Coach of the Year.
There is still a lot of basketball left to be played, and in the gauntlet of SEC play, this won’t be an easy ask, but Coach Pope has saved Kentucky basketball in the Bluegrass State.
Big Blue Nation is one of the best fan bases in college basketball, but they haven’t seen a successful team since the pandemic. That has changed in year one of Coach Pope.
The fact that should scare every opposing fan base in college basketball is that this will be Mark Pope’s least-talented team of his tenure at Kentucky, yet the 2024-25 Wildcats still have a real shot at winning a National Championship.
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