Should UK basketball have a general manager? Mark Pope shares his thoughts
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mark Pope talks about potentially hiring a general manager position for UK basketball.
- Pope’s comments came in response to fan questions about creating that role at Kentucky.
- Pope has been answering fan questions on social media during the 2026 offseason.
Mark Pope has spent the week fielding questions from Kentucky basketball fans on social media and responding to some of them.
Pope put out a request for questions Tuesday night, before turning around with answers on each of Wednesday and Thursday. Those responses included some insightful responses on topics such as international recruiting and roster construction ahead of what will be a critical third season for Pope in charge of his alma mater.
On Friday, Pope addressed a major talking point within the UK fanbase: Why doesn’t UK basketball have a general manager?
Pope said that instead of having one person in a general manager role, Kentucky currently has four people who work as a “general management team.”
Pope said the four people who comprise this team are director of roster management Keegan Brown, director of men’s basketball operations Nick Robinson, senior associate athletic director for athletic compliance Kevin Sergent and Kim Shelton, who is the senior vice president of NIL strategy at JMI Sports, which is the multimedia rights partner of UK Athletics.
“In this ever-changing, dynamic college basketball environment, everybody is trying a different solution,” Pope said.
Pope said Brown handles data analysis and roster construction, while Robinson handles salary cap management and strategy. Pope also said Sergent deals with contracts and legal language, and Shelton handles name, image and likeness contracts with corporate sponsors.
In recent years, several top college programs similar in stature to Kentucky have hired general managers, or staffers with another title who are in a general manager-type role. They include Duke, Indiana and North Carolina. Other notable programs with a general manager or a staffer with similar duties are Arkansas, BYU and national champion Michigan.
The topic of potentially hiring a GM has already been part of the discourse this UK basketball offseason.
In March — just four days after Kentucky’s 2025-26 season ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament — the Cats hired Brown as the program’s director of roster management. Brown previously worked with Pope for five seasons at BYU in roles that ranged from video coordinator to director of player personnel.
Pope has previously spoken about the duties that come with Brown’s position, which initially had the title “Associate Director, Player Development” on UK’s jobs’ website.
“It’s a back office position, somebody that can model for us 24/7. That can do salary cap models, that can do win-share models, that can do comparison research, in terms of us trying to get as deep into the details of managing this spring’s roster construction as we can,” Pope said in early March. “It’s really important to have somebody that, literally — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — is going to be just war gaming and modeling over and over and over again. And so we’re excited about filling that position. It’s going to really help us, as a staff, collect information.”
The job listing also called for helping with “innovative roster and resource management practices by evaluating internal and external talent, projecting performance trends, and helping develop forward-thinking strategies that optimize team composition and competitive success.”
Pope is also on the record as saying Brown’s job won’t be the final position that Kentucky adds behind the scenes.
