UK basketball coach Mark Pope reflects on his first season in charge after Sweet 16 loss

Mark Pope’s first season as the Kentucky men’s basketball coach has come to an end.

Pope’s Wildcats lost in the Sweet 16 of the 2025 NCAA Tournament on Friday night, dropping a 78-65 contest to the Tennessee Volunteers in a Midwest Regional semifinal at Lucas Oil Stadium.

UK was no match for Tennessee in the postseason contest, despite the Wildcats having beaten the Volunteers twice during the regular season.

Tennessee hammered Kentucky on the glass, in second-chance points and in bench points in the runaway win. Kentucky had a season-low 15 attempts from 3-point range in the loss, although the Wildcats set a new school record for 3-pointers made in a season during the game.

Pope’s first campaign as the UK coach ends with a 24-12 overall record. The Cats reached the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament and the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. That’s the furthest UK had been in the national postseason since 2019.

After the season-ending defeat to longtime rival Tennessee, Pope met with the media.

Here’s everything the UK coach said after his team was eliminated from the NCAA field.

Opening statement

It’s hard to talk about basketball right now. Congratulations to Tennessee. They played really hard and really well. I have a ton of respect for Coach Barnes. Mostly, we’re just sad that this is over.

Question about what’s next for UK basketball to make it back to the Sweet 16 and go further.

It’s just being relentless about it, just what these guys did to set an incredible foundation, giving us a great beginning. They set a really high standard. They set a high standard on the court, and a higher standard in the locker room and off the floor. They set an incredibly high standard representing the University of Kentucky, representing BBN and representing this jersey, and I’m grateful for that.

That standard will carry us for a long time. We’ll be talking about these guys 10 years from now as the guys that came in here and set a standard of what this is supposed to be, how you’re supposed to carry yourself as a Kentucky basketball player, how you’re supposed to connect yourself with your teammates. We’ll set this as a standard for the future. I’m very proud of these guys.

What was done has never been done before, actually. In so many ways, it’s never been done before and it’s because they’re really, really, really special, special young men.

Question about the role of God and faith in this Kentucky basketball season.

Man, this could be a long answer. I’ll keep it brief. I do believe that God has a plan for our lives. I do believe God brought all of us together with this extraordinary group. I think he brought us together so each of us individually could grow. I think he brought us together so we could build relationships that are going to last forever. I’m pretty sure one of these guys will be slumming at my house some time in the next years. I don’t know who it’s going to be.

I think that these guys have had an incredible impact. They’ve gone out of their way to have an incredible impact on BBN and the state of Kentucky and the community around them, whether it’s been their regular hospital visits or Ronald McDonald House visits, or meeting with fans before or after games, finding other ways to serve, and serving each other. I think this group was brought together to serve best they can. And these guys did it in an incredible fashion. We didn’t finish the job, which is a real thing.

But short of that, you couldn’t ask one more thing from these guys in how they serve, the standard they set, and how much of themselves they have given to this jersey and this community.

Question about if Pope proved anything to himself this season about being the head coach at Kentucky.

That’s an interesting question. I heard this the other day, and I actually think it’s true and these guys have been incredible examples of this, something that goes like this: If the spotlight on you is brighter than the light that comes from within you, then it’ll destroy you. A roundabout way to answer your question, these guys have an amazing light coming out of each of them. At the end of the day, it’s not about them. I feel the same way. It’s not about us. I think that’s the space where we live.

And so when you live that way, of course we all have doubts every single day, we do, but when it’s about something more important than just ourselves, man, those doubts seem to blur a little bit, and you just spend all your time trying to figure out how we’re supposed to make a difference, how it’s supposed to be, how we’re supposed to serve, how we’re supposed to make an impact. That’s what these guys have done, man.

What they did on the basketball court is incredible, but what they did for each other and this community is bigger and it’s going to last longer and mean more.

So, I don’t know. I think the doubt gets swallowed up in that, I really do. Of course we have doubts every single day, but they’re minimal.

This story was originally published March 29, 2025 at 12:00 AM.

Cameron Drummond

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-242-5257

Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas. Support my work with a digital subscription