The Athletic has live coverage of the Men’s Sweet 16 NCAA Tournament games
MILWAUKEE — Mark Pope stood inside a tunnel leading from the court to the locker room moments after Kentucky’s opening-round victory against Troy and smiled wide. The weight of the pressure associated with being the Wildcats’ first-year coach, of not having won an NCAA Tournament game in a decade and lightheartedly being jabbed by his players as The Big Zero, had temporarily been lifted.
How to celebrate? By sharing the joy with others.
As Pope waited for his players to exit the court, he raised his right hand in the air and began fist-bumping members of the Kentucky band when they walked past. One band member pulled out his cell phone and asked for a selfie with Pope, who obliged. Naturally, that led to other bandmates proffering a similar request. Pope honored all of them, remaining under the canopy in what amounted to a triumphal procession before he joined his team in the locker room.
It was just another example of Pope being Pope, of a man whose genuine appreciation for the chance to lead his alma mater and whose blend of competitiveness and optimism has endeared him to Big Blue Nation and his players.
“A lot of coaches, sometimes it doesn’t seem like they’re that happy,” Kentucky forward Ansley Almonor said. “Coach Pope is not like that. He’s very grateful for the opportunity.”
Or, as Kentucky guard Koby Brea put it: “He’s the most positive dude you’ll ever run into. Sometimes it’s scary how positive he is. I’m just like, ‘Dude, you’re not mad at that?’ It’s super fun to play for a coach like that. For us, he’s been a fresh breath of air.”
So has this Kentucky team, which has melded its talent while embracing Pope’s personality to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time in six years. No. 3 seed Kentucky followed up its defeat of Troy with an impressive near-wire-to-wire win against Illinois, giving Pope his first two NCAA Tournament victories within 48 hours of each other. Next up is a game Friday night in Indianapolis against No. 2 seed Tennessee — a fellow SEC team the Wildcats swept during the regular season — and an opportunity to keep this joyride going a little longer.
“We just love Kentucky so much,” said Pope’s wife, Lee Anne, while standing in a corridor after the Illinois victory. “We love BBN so much. We love these boys so much. It’s just so personal for our basketball family. I thought about it coming to the game. I was just like, ‘I don’t want this to end.’”
Pope, 52, did a masterful job during the offseason of overhauling Kentucky’s roster in the wake of John Calipari’s departure for Arkansas. He brought in nine transfers and three scholarship freshmen, which meant the only returners that saw any playing time were a pair of walk-ons who combined to play six minutes. Yes, the Kentucky brand and strong name, image and likeness financial support aided Pope in his efforts. But his magnetism and ability to connect all those players and maximize their skills are part of the story, too.
The recruitment of Wake Forest transfer Andrew Carr highlighted Pope’s personal approach. Carr and his parents had just finished an official visit to Texas Tech and were headed to visit Kentucky when flight troubles derailed their plans. They missed a connecting flight and ended up in Nashville, Tenn., around midnight, roughly 200 miles from Lexington, Ky. They planned to rent a car and drive the rest of the way, but Pope insisted on driving to meet them. Pope picked them up at a gas station off a highway in Bowling Green, Ky., and took them the last 150 miles or so, arriving on campus at 4 a.m. Carr visited Villanova the following day but quickly committed to Kentucky.
“It was a really cool experience for us,” Carr said. “He’s such a great coach just because of how great of a person he is.”
Kentucky freshman Trent Noah said it was evident when practices began that Pope — who played parts of seven seasons in the NBA and two more in Turkey — was a basketball “genius.” Noah marveled at the occasions when Pope would pause in the middle of practice, take out his clipboard and “draw up some masterpiece that will kill the blue or white team.” Pope’s goal was to empower players with an approach that allowed them to play with more freedom, emphasizing 3-pointers and cuts to the rim.
Brea, a fifth-year senior who transferred from Dayton, said this is the most fun he’s ever had playing basketball. But the style of play represents only part of the equation. Brea recalled a poor practice the team had early in the preseason. Pope didn’t yell or single anybody out. His message was simply: We’re going to be better tomorrow. Pope constantly utilized quotes as lessons as the team learned about him.
The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
Average people complain about what happened. Champions go make things happen.
Pope is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and regularly references the importance of his faith. He said a foundational principle of that faith is gratitude and that “if we really want to see the goodness of the world, if we work hard, we can see it.”
“It just is who he is,” Lee Anne said. “It’s just genuinely how he sees the world. It’s not something that he turns off and on. And he’s been that way since I met him 25 years ago. He’s not playing to a crowd. He really is playing to a very small audience, and I say that like in a spiritual way. He’s playing to God, and he loves these boys. I think one of the definitions of a leader is you take a group of people to a place where they can’t get on their own. And he’s just built that way.”
Pope brought his youngest of four daughters, Shay, to the interview podium with him last week, the day before the Illinois game, and launched into a story about the importance of joy and how it translated to both life and basketball. If given the choice between $10 million and waking up tomorrow, he said, the answer would be obvious.
“Waking up tomorrow is worth way more than $10 million,” Pope said. “That’s a fact, and it’s a reality. It’s just sometimes we don’t actually take the time to look at it and understand it that way. And when we actively do that, I think our lives get really good, really fast.
“I want my guys to be challenged. I want them to face all of the struggles and trials and adversity that this game and this experience can offer them because it gives them a chance to grow. But I also want them every single day to remember how blessed they are to have the opportunity to wake up, to be basketball players at the University of Kentucky. It’s just incredible.”
Pope’s hiring represented a feel-good story, considering he transferred as a 6-foot-10 center from Washington to Kentucky and was a captain on the 1996 Wildcats team that won a national championship. But there were some questions, at least externally, about how equipped he was as a coach for such a cutthroat job at Kentucky, which had won eight national titles. Two coaches who had turned down Kentucky after Calipari left were Baylor’s Scott Drew and UConn’s Dan Hurley, both of whom had won national championships in the past four years (Drew one and Hurley two).
In nine seasons as a head coach at Utah Valley and BYU, Pope had reached the NCAA Tournament twice with the Cougars — both first-round exits to a double-digit seed. And then there was the matter of whether his temperament was right for Kentucky. Was it possible that he was simply too … nice?
Several Kentucky players said they never doubted how badly Pope wanted to win, even if he approached it in a different way. Freshman Travis Perry said his favorite Pope story stemmed from his playing days at Kentucky. One night during the season, the big men came into Rupp Arena after 10:30 p.m. to work on post moves. Pope took a shot to the face that pushed a tooth through his mouth. Pope was back in the gym the next day for practice. He still has the scar.
“Get hit in the mouth and keep going every single day,” Perry said. “Coach P is no joke, for sure.”
Pope demonstrated his competitive fire during the most difficult stretch of the season, when Kentucky lost four of five games, which included an 89-79 loss to Arkansas and Calipari at Rupp Arena and a 98-84 road loss three days later at Ole Miss. Kentucky dropped to 15-7 overall and 4-5 in the SEC. Pope acknowledged then that “there may or may not have been some completely destroyed furniture in the locker room.” He also appeared to have blood on his right hand during the postgame press conference following the Ole Miss loss. The Wildcats won six of their next nine games to close the regular season.
“People think that he’s soft on us,” Kentucky forward Amari Williams said. “But that’s not the case.”
Expectations at Kentucky are extraordinarily high because success is measured by what happens in March and, when everything really comes together, April. There was a general sense of relief around the program after the Wildcats won their first-round game, which occurred just once over the last four tournaments under Calipari. Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, who hired Pope, walked by Lee Anne near the locker room, turned to her and said: “And we’re off and running.”
Kentucky then backed up that performance by playing with plenty of toughness in its victory against Illinois, forcing 14 steals, staving off a late Illini comeback and inching closer toward being remembered as one of the truly special Wildcats teams. Pope made sure to share the celebration again, jogging to find his wife and daughters behind the bench for a long embrace before hustling to a TV interview.
What players say Pope has shown this season is that he knows basketball. He knows Kentucky. And his unique blend of ingredients means he knows how to push the right buttons and win.
“Nobody knew more what this job was than Mark,” Lee Anne said. “He knew. He walked it. He’s been there. It will never be about him, and it will never be about us. It is about these boys who get one shot.”
(Photo: Mark Hoffman / USA Today via Imagn)
