Mark Pope made an impression on star recruit. But the NBA could be his next move
Every couple of minutes during Tounde Yessoufou’s media interview session at the NBA Combine last week, a new reporter would sidle up to the player’s station with an old question.
Each time, the Baylor guard would smile brightly, listen patiently and give some variation of the same answer. At the very beginning of that 20-minute session, Yessoufou, who has entered the college basketball transfer portal in addition to the 2026 draft, made his position perfectly clear.
The first question of the day regarding whether he might pull out of the draft and return to school got a straightforward reply.
“I haven’t genuinely thought about going back, none of that stuff,” Yessoufou said. “I’m pretty confident about where I stand.”
And the next question on the subject?
“My focus is just the NBA,” he said.
And the one after that?
“I’m not really worrying about that,” he said of any recent discussions with college coaches. “I’ve made it clear that I genuinely don’t want to talk to other schools. My focus, again, is the draft and the NBA.”
Another reporter who missed the first three rounds of questioning came up after that. This question was framed in a way that assumed Yessoufou would be removing his name from the draft. What type of role was he looking for in the transfer portal? Yessoufou smiled again.
“To be honest, I never thought about that one,” he said. “Because I’m not planning on returning. Again, my main focus is just the draft.”
And so it went for another 15 minutes or so, until Yessoufou’s session came to a close.
Such a sequence isn’t uncommon at this event, which has in recent years featured a handful of draft hopefuls who have also entered the transfer portal and are thought to be on the fence. But while some of Yessoufou’s peers — Milan Momcilovic and Allen Graves, for example — alternate between answering draft questions and college queries with flexibility regarding their futures, Yessoufou never wavered.
Anyone who walked into that room thinking the 6-foot-5 guard might be playing college basketball again next season likely walked out with the feeling that it was a long shot, at best.
If Yessoufou isn’t currently talking to college coaches, one reporter conceded as the prodding continued, surely his agents had been. Right?
“I don’t know,” Yessoufou replied. “My message was pretty clear: NBA. Anything else is not really in my mind.”
It doesn’t get much more clear than that.
Yessoufou’s status leading up to the May 27 deadline for college basketball players to withdraw from the draft and maintain their NCAA eligibility is of particular interest to Kentucky, a school that’s still searching for some star power this spring and one that has the NIL resources to cover it.
Mark Pope’s program should feature plenty of intriguing pieces in the backcourt. UK added high-upside playmakers Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins from the transfer portal, and that duo will join 6-8 perimeter players Kam Williams and Braydon Hawthorne, a couple of similarly high-upside returnees from last season’s roster.
But Yessoufou is a different kind of player.
As a freshman at Baylor, he averaged 17.8 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game. He wasn’t a major threat from deep (29.3% as a 3-point shooter), but his gritty, physical style could be of use in any lineup. He rebounds especially well for his position, and his measurables at the Combine — a 6-10 wingspan and 8-7 standing reach — lean well into his defensive potential.
Yessoufou, who turned 20 years old last week, might’ve already outgrown the college game, however. He made that pretty clear with his words from Chicago, and the NBA draft analysts are backing up that talk.
In the wave of new mock drafts that posted after last week’s NBA lottery, several had Yessoufou pegged as a first round pick, with Yahoo (27th), CBS Sports (29th) and The Athletic (30th), all putting him in that range, while ESPN had him at No. 32, just two picks into the second round.
If a return to school is indeed a nonstarter for Yessoufou, it’s too bad for Kentucky.
The Cats made a run at him the first time around, emerging as a potential landing spot for the five-star prospect directly out of high school. And while Pope lost out to Baylor’s Scott Drew in that recruitment, the UK coach apparently left a good impression.
“I love him,” Yessoufou told the Herald-Leader of Pope. “Obviously, he’s a great human being. I think that’s my first thing. No matter how good you are as a coach, you have to be a great human being. I think he is. That was a good thing. He came to my house. We had a conversation with my mom, and everybody really loved him.”
He explained that his decision went Baylor’s way for a number of reasons.
Yessoufou saw similar personal traits in Drew while noting that he had an NCAA championship on his résumé, as well as a track record of coaching NBA lottery picks. Yessoufou, a devout Christian, also talked about the faith-based reputation of Drew’s program. (Baylor is a private university that was founded on Baptist principles.)
“But I also wanted to be in an environment where it’s a small community, where I don’t have to be distracted by anything — just focusing on basketball,” Yessoufou said.
So, he ended up siding with Baylor, and nothing he said at the Combine should give Pope or any other college coach the hope that there might be a second recruitment in Yessoufou’s future.
While players like Momcilovic (a major UK target) and Graves left the door open to a college return while also making clear that they were fully focused on the draft process, Yessoufou kept a one-track mind throughout Combine week.
He also spoke with pride about what staying in the draft would mean. Yessoufou is from the West African country of Benin, which has never produced an NBA player.
“The main thing for me is the fact that I know I’m going to be the first ever in my country to be drafted,” he said.
It certainly sounds like the decision has been made. But with so few legitimate game-changers still available in this cycle, Pope and the rest of the college basketball world might as well keep tabs on Yessoufou up until that May 27 deadline passes.
Let’s say, as a hypothetical, that Yessoufou does pull out of the draft between now and then. In that case, would he view Kentucky as a potential transfer destination?
The player smiled politely once more, appearing to appreciate the effort but unwilling to offer up anything new.
“To be honest, again, I don’t really know,” he said. “Because my main focus is just the league. Nothing else.”
