Before an awkward night in Rupp Arena, Mark Pope offers his thoughts on John Calipari

Two days before one of the most anticipated games of the college basketball season, Mark Pope sat in Memorial Coliseum and began his weekly press conference with a subject unrelated to X’s and O’s.

Pope showed off a pair of handpainted shoes that he planned to wear for Kentucky’s game against Arkansas on Saturday night. He explained excitedly that these personalized, size-16 Nikes would be worn in recognition of this week’s Coaches vs. Cancer initiative, which for more than three decades has seen college coaches wear sneakers — often with suits — on the sidelines.

Back in November, Pope and all of his assistant coaches — along with the UK women’s basketball staff — spent time in the Joe Craft Center with children and their families, painting the shoes that fans will see in Rupp Arena this weekend.

That event was organized by DanceBlue, the UK student organization that has raised more than $23 million in the fight against pediatric cancer since 2006. “And so we got to spend some time with some young cancer patients painting these shoes,” Pope explained.

The shoes he will wear — white Nikes painted different shades of blue, with Pope’s old UK jersey number, 41, prominently featured — were designed by Gunnar, 15, and his sister Lily, 13. Gunnar is a patient at Kentucky Children’s Hospital, and Pope was a big fan of the finished product put together by he and his sister.

“What I really like is, on the sole … it’s got all eight championships,” Pope said, drawing attention to the years of UK’s past national titles written on the side of the left shoe. He then pointed out a number all alone on the right shoe. “This is ’25 with a question mark,” Pope added. “So we’ll see how this deal goes.”

The timing was fitting.

On Saturday night, the man on the opposing sideline will be John Calipari, who spent the past 15 years in the job that Pope occupies now. For all of his victories in that position — a national title and four trips to the Final Four among the success — a major part of Calipari’s legacy at UK will be the charitable contributions he made off the basketball court, raising millions of dollars and uncountable awareness for all manner of causes, helping those both inside and outside the commonwealth.

Pope on Thursday acknowledged not being able to watch many UK basketball games during Calipari’s tenure. He followed the team from afar as a major supporter, but his own career in coaching didn’t allow him the free time to sit down and watch his alma mater too often.

“But everybody in college basketball was touched and moved, and kind of trying to follow the lead of the incredible work that Cal did in the community,” Pope said. “He was such an incredible ambassador for college basketball and Kentucky basketball for so long, and he was so active out in the community. He was a real gift to this entire community.”

On Saturday, he comes back to Lexington on the other side of the rivalry, an odd dynamic for everyone involved.

Pope, who has had nothing but kind words for Calipari since the moment he was picked as his successor back in April, has continued to heap praise on the former coach this week.

“We have been blessed at the University of Kentucky to have some of the greatest coaches to ever coach the game of basketball, and certainly Cal is one of those,” Pope said on his radio show Wednesday night. “He’s a Hall of Fame coach. In his 15-year tenure, what he accomplished at the University of Kentucky was incredible. In some ways, he revolutionized the game of college basketball.

“And he’s left a legacy that probably won’t be ever reproduced in the same way that he did it. And as a member of BBN and a huge fan of Kentucky basketball, my whole heart is here. And I love Cal. I love Cal for what he did for Kentucky basketball, and — on a very personal level — he’s been so great to Lee Anne and I as a mentor and a friend.”

But Pope has also acknowledged that it’s “a little bit of a complicated relationship” between Big Blue Nation and Calipari at the moment.

Rick Pitino, who was Pope’s coach at Kentucky — and one of Calipari’s biggest rivals for decades — released a video around the time of Pope’s Thursday press conference asking fans to show class and give Calipari a “standing ovation” Saturday night in recognition for all he did for the program.

Pope has stopped short of advising the Kentucky fans what to do or how to react when his predecessor walks through the visiting tunnel in Rupp Arena a few minutes before tipoff.

The current UK coach predicted that Calipari will, at some point, have a night sometime in the future when a packed Rupp Arena showers him with adoration — as Kentucky fans did for Pitino at Big Blue Madness in October — but it’s highly unlikely to be a universal lovefest this weekend.

“Now, you know, we’ll see Saturday,” Pope said. “Saturday is gonna be, you know, it’s also a competition, right? So it’s just going to be what it is. But I have a ton of love for Cal, and I’m grateful for what he did here at Kentucky. And I’m grateful that I get to be here and enjoy some of the fruits of his incredible labors here.

“And so I was super appreciative of him, and I know everybody in BBN feels the same way, even though I also know everybody in BBN wants to win this game on Saturday.”

Throughout the week — and, really, for the past nine months — Pope has made clear his level of appreciation and respect for Calipari while being careful not to tell Kentucky fans how they should feel about him in the present. Pope called him an “icon” of college basketball Thursday and again referred to him as a “mentor” in his own coaching career.

The current UK coach has also made clear his team will be treating this game as they did every one that came before it. “I know that’s so boring,” Pope said. “I hate being boring, but it’s actually really true.”

Making that easier will be the fact that none of Kentucky’s players ever played under Calipari, and only one — freshman Travis Perry — was even recruited by him.

Conversely, three Arkansas players — Adou Thiero, D.J. Wagner and Zvonimir Ivisic — followed Calipari from Lexington to Fayetteville after last season. And two Arkansas freshmen expected to play prominent roles Saturday — Karter Knox and Billy Richmond — were committed to UK under Calipari.

Whether UK fans cheer or boo their former coach on Saturday night — or simply sit on their hands when he’s introduced to the Rupp Arena crowd — has been a national storyline all week. Pundits have opined on how Kentucky fans should react, and arguments are everywhere on social media.

Since the schedule came out months ago, Feb. 1 has been circled on the college basketball calendar.

“I love the drama,” Pope acknowledged. “You know, it’s Kentucky, right? It follows us in everything we do. It’s one of the beautiful things about getting a chance to play here and coach here and be associated with this program, is we care. And people feel how much we care, and so they care to be interested. And so I love that people are interested in what’s happening here, and it’s always been that way, and I assume it always will. And these moments in time are just — they’re fun for fans and fun to capture, and they can be super dramatic. And I think it’s great. It’s something to write about and talk about and enjoy and celebrate.

“On a personal level, I love competing against people that I admire and look up to and love. And Cal is certainly one of those people. I mean, he’s a Hall of Fame coach, and he’s a legend in the sport, and he’s rewritten a lot of the book on how things are done. He’s one of the best that there ever was. And he’s also got an unbelievable legacy here at the University of Kentucky. … There’s nobody you love to compete against more than your brother, somebody in the family, or somebody tied to you. And you’re searching for bragging rights, and all the things that come with it. And all the drama and emotion that comes with it, it makes it really special.”

This story was originally published January 30, 2025 at 2:39 PM.

Ben Roberts

Lexington Herald-Leader

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Ben Roberts is the University of Kentucky men’s basketball beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He has previously specialized in UK basketball recruiting coverage and created and maintained the Next Cats blog. He is a Franklin County native and first joined the Herald-Leader in 2006. Support my work with a digital subscription