What qualifies as success for Mark Pope in year one at Kentucky?
It seems people have two primary questions about Mark Pope’s impending debut season as Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball coach:
1.) How much fan patience will there be for the new UK head man?
2.) What must Pope achieve in season one to have his first year deemed a success?
The answer to question one is easy: Expectations will be immediately high for the new Kentucky head man. Fan patience will be sparse.
That is both because we live in impatient times and because, as you can see below, the history of new UK men’s hoops coaches is filled with debut seasons that yielded immediate prosperity for the Big Blue Nation.
For varied reasons, the answer to what will be deemed success for Pope in year one is more complex.
In the coming season, the Wildcats will feature a brand-new roster that will not boast even one scholarship player who played for UK last year.
By the standards of Kentucky basketball coaches of the past, Pope’s résumé is lighter on achievements than has been the norm for those who have been hired in modern times to direct the UK program.
Those two factors combine to make the 2024-25 Kentucky season one of mystery.
One aspect working in Pope’s favor in the perception game is how lackluster, by UK’s regal standards, the past four Kentucky seasons have been.
In what turned out to be John Calipari’s final four years as Kentucky coach (2020 through 2024) before his self-exile to Arkansas, UK won 63.5% of its games overall (80-46).
Kentucky won 66.2% of its SEC games (47-24).
Versus UK’s biggest rivals — Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Louisville, North Carolina and Tennessee — the Wildcats won 50% of their games (10-10). (UK didn’t play IU at all during that stretch.)
Against teams ranked in the AP Top 25, the Wildcats won 37.9% of their contests (11-18).
Meanwhile, postseason play was an abject disaster for UK over the past four seasons. The Cats went 1-4 in the SEC Tournament and 1-3 in the NCAA Tournament.
Going back to Adolph Rupp, prior Kentucky coaches have tended to break from the starting gate with speed.
Rupp debuted (1930-31) before there was a Southeastern Conference but coached his first UK team to a 15-3 mark and the finals of the Southern Conference Tournament.
Joe B. Hall led UK to a 20-8 mark, the SEC regular-season title and the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight in his first season (1972-73).
Eddie Sutton went 32-4 and directed Kentucky to the SEC regular-season and tournament titles and the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight in his debut (1985-86).
After inheriting a program decimated by NCAA probation and a mass exodus of star players, Rick Pitino directed an undermanned UK roster to an inspiring 14-14 campaign in his initial season (1989-90).
Tubby Smith made the mother of all coaching debuts, taking UK to a 35-4 season in 1997-98 that included winning the SEC regular-season and tournament titles and the 1998 NCAA Tournament championship.
Billy Gillispie started his first season (2007-08) going 6-7 in nonconference play but rallied his team to go 12-4 in the SEC and appear in the NCAA Tournament (a round-of-64 loss to Marquette).
Calipari’s inaugural year (2009-10) on the Kentucky bench saw the Wildcats go 35-3, take the SEC regular-season and tournament crowns and reach the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight.
In his debut season, Pope faces the task of getting a roster that is presently comprised of nine incoming transfers and three new freshman recruits to mesh.
He must do so while competing in an increasingly muscular SEC that has seen three conference programs — South Carolina (2017), Auburn (2019) and Alabama (2024) — make Final Four trips since Kentucky (2015) last did.
UK will enter 2024-25 having only won the SEC regular-season title once (2019-20) and the SEC Tournament (2017-18) once in the past seven years. (There was no SEC Tournament in 2019-20 due to the efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic.)
So, given all that context, what needs to happen for Pope’s debut season at Kentucky to be judged a success?
Obviously, the optimum outcome for Pope would be to win something — an SEC regular-season or tournament title and/or to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
With so much new in the UK program, it’s hard to tell how realistic that is.
At the minimum, Pope can really help himself in year one if he:
▪ Wins more than UK’s “share” of the scheduled rivalry games against Duke, Louisville and Tennessee, plus claims a victory in a certain “homecoming” contest with Arkansas at Rupp Arena;
▪ Gets his team at least in contention for the SEC regular-season title;
▪ Leads UK to multiple wins in a SEC Tournament for the first time since 2018;
▪ Gets Kentucky to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
Getting most of that done should render Mark Pope’s first season as top Cat a success.
