Kentucky basketball assistant named head coach of the Bahamas national team
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mikhail McLean was named head coach of the Bahamas men's national basketball team.
- McLean will remain on Pope’s staff as he enters his third season at Kentucky.
- The Bahamas team was one victory away from qualifying for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
One of Mark Pope’s assistant coaches has landed quite the side gig.
Mikhail McLean was named the head coach of the Bahamas men’s national team Wednesday, giving the UK basketball assistant an opportunity to return to his home country and fulfill a personal dream that he’s held since entering the coaching profession.
McLean will remain on Pope’s staff at Kentucky, where he’s entering his third season.
The 34-year-old moved to the United States from the Bahamas at age 14 and emerged as a standout high school player in Texas, later committing to the Houston Cougars and playing five seasons with the program.
After his playing career was finished, McLean joined coach Kelvin Sampson’s support staff at Houston and was later hired as an assistant coach at Lamar by Alvin Brooks, a former UK assistant who recruited and coached McLean with the Cougars.
McLean, whose summer duties on Sampson’s staff at Houston precluded him from working with the Bahamas team, joined the national squad as an assistant coach when he made the move with Brooks to Lamar in 2021, and he’s remained involved with the team ever since.
“That was actually the first thing I mentioned to Coach Brooks. I said, ‘If I take this job, I have to be able to work with the Bahamas,’” McLean told the Herald-Leader shortly after joining Pope’s first UK staff in 2024. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to do, and this is my fourth year doing it, and we’ve gotten better and better every single year, so it’s been amazing.”
The Bahamas team was one victory away from qualifying for the Summer Olympics in 2024. The squad is scheduled to play two FIBA World Cup qualifying games in Nassau next month.
McLean, who turns 35 years old in August, said “Bahamian pride” prompted him to pursue a spot on the national team’s coaching staff early in his career. He told the Herald-Leader that his mother died in 2021, his final season on the Houston staff and the year the Cougars made it to the Final Four. McLean’s father died the following year, and his grandmother died the year after that.
“I just felt as though that I had so much to give to it,” he said of coaching the Bahamas team. “... So just always being able to give back to a country that’s done so much for me. I go back every year and I’m just able to pour into them. So it was a really, really big deal to do that.”
McLean missed part of UK’s summer practice session entering his first season in Lexington due to his obligations with the Bahamas team, and he’ll be away for part of this summer, too. The Cats are scheduled to begin their eight-week summer practice session Monday.
Pope hired McLean, a relative unknown in college basketball coaching circles, to fill the final spot on his staff late in the 2024 cycle. Since then, he has established himself as a key part of Pope’s coaching staff.
McLean came to Kentucky on a one-year deal, but Pope moved quickly to keep him with the program following the 2024-25 season. McLean signed a two-year extension shortly after the 2024-25 season that will keep him with the Cats through the end of the upcoming season.
He has openly talked about the desire to become a college head coach in the near future. McLean — listed as a 6-foot-8 forward during his playing days at Houston — works with UK’s frontcourt players and has been credited with the development of Amari Williams and Malachi Moreno over the past two seasons. He’s also taken on more of a recruiting role in recent months, especially following the departures of UK assistant coaches Alvin Brooks III and Jason Hart this offseason.
Pope has often praised McLean’s energy and teaching ability, as well as the personal connections he’s made with UK players as the youngest member of the Cats’ coaching staff.
“Mikhail is going to be a star in this business. He’s going to be a star,” Pope told the Herald-Leader last year. “You talk about high ceilings. He’s got a really high ceiling. He’s meant so much to us. … And he is a star in the making. He is going to be a head coach sooner than any of us would imagine. And he’s going to crush it.”
Pope hired former NBA All-Star Mo Williams as a new member of his coaching staff this spring. Williams will join McLean, Mark Fox and Cody Fueger, who have all been with Pope for both of his seasons at Kentucky so far.
UK still has one vacancy on the 2026-27 coaching staff. Pope has reached out to NBA veteran Jamal Crawford for the position this spring, and he remains a possibility, though the Kentucky coach has implied recently that he’s in no hurry to fill the final spot, citing future NCAA decisions on topics such as international recruiting and player eligibility that have yet to be settled.
“We’re taking our time with this last assistant coaching position,” Pope told UK Sports Network this week. “The staff is working at, I think, a really good level right now. And we’re trying to read the tea leaves on some decision-making that the NCAA is going to make clear here over the next few weeks. That’s going to direct us, kind of, on what space we need to really focus on.”
