U of L’s Pat Kelsey likes the team that Mark Pope put together. ‘He’s like Noah’s Ark.’
About four months before they coach against each other in one of the most heated rivalries in college sports for the first time, Mark Pope and Pat Kelsey shared a stage in downtown Louisville on Wednesday afternoon.
Pope and Kelsey — the new men’s basketball coaches at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, respectively — were hired just a couple of weeks apart back in the spring. Those first several weeks on the job were a whirlwind for both. Entire rosters were built from scratch. Coaching staffs were constructed. Before things settled down, summer practice began.
On Wednesday, amid relative calm after all of that and ahead of the storm of the 2024-25 season, Pope and Kelsey came together as keynote speakers for the Leadership Louisville Center’s annual luncheon, a discussion moderated by Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who tipped things off by asking for the most surprising thing of each man’s first week on the new job.
“The most surprising thing is there wasn’t much that was surprising about my first week,” said Pope, who lived in Lexington for three years and played for the Wildcats in the 1990s. “I love the University of Kentucky. It’s in my heart. There’s more familiar faces there than there are non-familiar faces. I have a feel for this state. It changed me forever. I love it so much. …
“I wasn’t really surprised by much, but I’m just really, really grateful to be here.”
Kelsey, a Cincinnati native who played college basketball at Xavier, noted his not-far-from-the-Bluegrass roots, saying he was close enough to feel how seriously folks in Kentucky took the sport. He said he obviously knew it was important, but he didn’t know just how important until he took the U of L job and started settling into the city.
“You pump gas, people want selfies,” the energetic and animated Kelsey quipped, drawing the first of many laughs during a back-and-forth that lasted more than half an hour (leading the event’s final speaker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, to take the stage a tad later than expected).
Kelsey then recounted a story from his first days in Louisville.
The bespectacled new coach — a little more than a foot shorter than Pope — was walking down the street, “feeling pretty good about myself” after landing the prominent gig, and a stranger walked up to him.
“Hey, man,” the stranger said. “Anybody ever tell you you look like that new basketball coach, Pat Kelsey?”
“I get that all the time,” Kelsey told him.
“Man, that must really tick you off,” the guy replied.
Kelsey’s punchline got another big laugh from the crowd.
“Welcome to Louisville!” Mayor Greenberg said facetiously.
‘Two of everything’
Much of the discussion between the two coaches was centered around the theme of the day — leadership — and both offered their philosophies on the subject, what they’d learned throughout their careers and the principles they hoped to pass on to their young players.
But there was some basketball talk, too.
“I’m incredibly excited,” said Pope, who wrapped up eight weeks of summer practice with his squad this month. The Kentucky coach had just been speaking of his approach to team-building and that process, for him, beginning with finding the “right people” who will bring a shared vision to his program.
“We talked about starting with people, and I think we have tremendous people,” Pope said. “We had an eight-week training camp this summer, where we got together. We don’t have a single player on our roster that’s played at the University of Kentucky before, and we only have one player that played for me before. So we tried to squeeze a whole season into eight weeks. And my guys responded brilliantly.
“And it was the things they learned on the court, I was excited about — but their interactions off the court is what really has me inspired. Where I see guys going out of their way to intentionally — as a verb — love each other and lift each other and care about each other. And I’ve also watched my guys learn, very quickly, what this great state is and what it means to have a chance to wear Kentucky across their chest.”
Pope went on to talk about instilling the meaning of UK basketball into his players and reiterated his excitement for what he’s seen so far.
And then it was Kelsey’s turn to preview his team. Before that, he playfully chided Pope for being modest regarding his roster.
“Obviously, with the rivalry, I’ve paid very close attention to what Mark’s done and what he’s built,” the Louisville coach said. “He’s underselling. He’s like Noah’s Ark. He’s got two of everything.”
That drew more laughter from the 1,400 or so people in attendance.
Indeed, Pope’s first UK roster might lack superstars, but it’s been lauded as an incredibly deep bunch. The group includes nine transfers — seven of them seniors or graduate students — and three freshmen, all new to the program. Former BYU player Jaxson Robinson is the only Cat who’s played for Pope in the past.
Kelsey’s roster is similarly new.
His group of 13 scholarship players features 12 incoming transfers — three of whom played for him at Charleston — and one freshman. Like at UK, none of Louisville’s scholarship players have ever played for the Cardinals before.
Kelsey noted the similarities between the situations both coaches found waiting for them in the spring.
“We’re coming in here fresh,” he said. “You built basically an entirely new roster — as did I — and that eight weeks was as much about winning minds and hearts. All the culture stuff that he just talked about.”
Friendly rivals
The coaches spent much of their half-hour nodding along — and even clapping along with the crowd — at their counterpart’s points on leadership and creating a new culture as the foundation for what both hope to be long tenures in their new positions.
Kelsey spoke of “the power of the unit” and the need for teammates to love and respect each other. He said his goal is to have the “best culture” in college basketball, while acknowledging that Pope, who nodded along with this point, surely had the same objective.
“It’s not easy,” Kelsey said. “It’s a new day and age. It’s different. Collegiate athletics is different than it’s ever been before. Obviously, NIL, which creates a whole new thing. So you know, the teams that can be the most cohesive, that can love each other, that can sacrifice, those are the truths of winning.”
Greenberg moved to end the discussion, and Kelsey realized he never gave an assessment of his team.
“Oh, and by the way,” he interjected, “I think we’re gonna be good!”
They should be much better than the past couple of years.
The Cardinals went 12-52 overall with a 5-35 record in the ACC in two seasons under head coach Kenny Payne — a longtime John Calipari assistant at UK — but Kelsey’s squad is projected as a possible NCAA Tournament team this season.
ESPN’s latest Bracketology projection has the Cards as the second team out of the March Madness field in the first year under Kelsey, who spent the past three seasons at Charleston and was the head coach at Winthrop for nine years before that.
Pope, who was hired as Calipari’s replacement in April, spent the past five seasons at BYU and the four previous years as the Utah Valley head coach. He was a captain on UK’s 1996 national championship squad, and his first bunch of Wildcats is viewed as a back-end Top 25 team in the preseason, though national analysts have talked up Kentucky’s upside beyond that range, should all of the new pieces click on the court.
Both Kelsey and Pope are expected to bring exciting offenses to their new positions. BYU and Charleston were second and third nationally, respectively, in 3-point attempts per game last season.
While both coaches have had ample regular-season success, each is still looking for his first NCAA Tournament victory. Kelsey has qualified for March Madness in four of the past five seasons but is 0-4 in the tournament. Pope was 0-2 with BYU, and both coaches would have had their teams in the 2020 edition had it not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Obviously, neither coach has had an opportunity to lead a program on the level of UK or Louisville in the past.
Pope vs. Kelsey
The first meeting on the court between Pope and Kelsey is set for Dec. 14 in Rupp Arena.
The Wildcats have dominated the rivalry in recent years.
Since Calipari took the UK job 15 years ago, the Cats have a 13-3 record over the Cards, including two wins in the NCAA Tournament (one of those coming in the 2012 Final Four). The rivalry was red-hot — on and off the court — when Rick Pitino, who was Pope’s coach at Kentucky, faced Calipari as the leader of the Cardinals. There was still an edge to the annual battle when Chris Mack became U of L’s coach.
Some of the tension was relieved when Payne took over two years ago, though the fan bases remain as antagonistic as ever and former players from the two sides engaged in a near-brawl after a TBT game in Freedom Hall just last month.
Now, Calipari is gone to Arkansas, and Payne has rejoined him as the Razorbacks’ top assistant. It’s a fresh start for those two mainstays of the rivalry — Payne was a former U of L standout, as well as a UK assistant for 10 years — and a new beginning for the rivalry itself.
This will be the first time that both programs have new head coaches going into the season since 1930, when Adolph Rupp began his 42-year stint at Kentucky and Eddie Weber was promoted to lead Louisville after serving as an assistant during the previous season.
UK has won five of the six meetings since Pitino’s departure — the Cats’ lone loss coming in 2020, during their dreadful 9-16 season — and Kentucky beat Louisville by a combined 42 points in the last two games.
The Cards haven’t beaten the Cats in Rupp Arena since Jan. 5, 2008, when Billy Gillispie was coach.
Outside thinking says the Wildcats will remain on top in this series moving forward.
A CBS Sports poll of anonymous college basketball coaches released this week found that 67% of respondents predicted UK would be more successful than U of L over the next five years.
But fans of both programs are optimistic about the path forward, and there’s obviously much more to success with these two basketball schools than one nonconference game. Kentucky has won just one NCAA Tournament game since 2019. Louisville hasn’t won one since Pitino was in charge. For both proud programs, that’s hard times.
When Beshear finally took the stage Wednesday afternoon, he bestowed the Kentucky Colonel honorific on both head coaches and predicted plenty of good fortune in March (and beyond) for both men. He noted that the last time each school won an NCAA title, there was a Beshear in the governor’s office. (Andy’s father, Steve, was governor for UK’s championship march in 2012 and Louisville’s run the following year.)
Beshear, who was re-elected in 2023, will be around for the start of the Pope and Kelsey eras, and he said he wanted to see them both lift the national title trophy during his time in office.
“We’ve got three and a half years. Let’s make sure we get this done.”
This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 6:30 AM.
