What Mark Pope’s first 23 games as UK coach tell us about Kentucky basketball’s future
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In the big picture of Kentucky basketball, the 23 games Mark Pope has served as head coach is not an ample sample size.
Nevertheless, as No. 15 UK (16-7, 5-5 SEC) prepares to face No. 5 Tennessee (20-4, 7-4 SEC) at Rupp Arena on Tuesday night, some trends have emerged that seem likely to shape the future of Pope’s tenure as Wildcats coach.
Trend one: Under Pope, Kentucky is going to be better on offense than defense.
Through games of Sunday, UK stood No. 2 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency in the Pomeroy ratings. Conversely, the Wildcats were a pedestrian No. 90 in adjusted defensive efficiency.
To put that in perspective, since the Pomeroy ratings began in 2002, the lowest defensive efficiency rating for a team that won the NCAA championship was No. 22 by Baylor in 2021.
That a Pope-coached team is more adept at offense than defense should not be a surprise.
In the coach’s nine seasons as a head man prior to this one — four (2015-19) at Utah Valley; five (2019-24) at BYU — his teams ranked better in offensive efficiency than defensive efficiency seven times.
What has been surprising is that Kentucky presently ranks worse in adjusted defensive efficiency than did any of Pope’s BYU teams, the worst of which finished at No. 70 in 2021-22.
The key for UK to attain the level of achievement under Pope that the Big Blue Nation expects from Kentucky men’s basketball is for the Wildcats to be elite offensively and somewhere approaching good defensively.
Trend two: Pope is committed to using a deep rotation.
In what turned out to be his final two seasons at BYU, Pope used 10-man rotations.
This Kentucky squad has nine players averaging at least 15 minutes per game.
As injuries have impacted UK’s normal substitution patterns, Pope has expanded the roles of players who had been at the end of the bench in order to remain “deep.”
Entering the UT game, Kentucky has no player averaging as many as 30 minutes per game. Jaxson Robinson (28.7) and Otega Oweh (28.2) lead the Cats in minutes played per game.
If those figures hold until season’s end, it would be the third straight year that no player on Pope’s roster averaged as many as 30 minutes.
Trend three: Pope knows how to “recruit to his system.”
After inheriting a 2024-25 Kentucky team that boasted exactly zero returning scholarship players, Pope primarily used the transfer portal to build a 12-man roster that, when healthy, has been a unit in which the sum has greatly exceeded the parts.
You won’t find the 2025 NBA mock drafts overflowing with current members of the Kentucky Wildcats. Yet UK has victories over three teams now ranked in the top five of the AP Top 25.
From that start of no scholarship players, Pope put together a roster that, through games of Sunday, had seven Quad 1 wins. Out of every NCAA Division I men’s team in the country, only Auburn (12) and Tennessee (eight) had more Quad 1 wins than Kentucky.
Conversely, as injuries have befallen UK, we have seen how a team built on complementary pieces suffers when its roster is not whole.
Trend four: Pope embraces the circus that is Kentucky basketball.
As a former UK player, Pope understands the fan zeal that makes Kentucky basketball unique.
After his postgame radio show at home games, Pope generally stays until every last autograph request is filled. Following road victories, the new Kentucky coach has been willing to go into the stands to personally greet those who ensured that “Blue got in.”
Whether that level of fan engagement is sustainable without eventually wearing down the 52-year-old coach will be an interesting question to monitor over the course of Pope’s UK tenure.
For the remainder of Pope’s debut season, the most important thing to watch will be how UK performs in postseason tournament competition.
Over the final six seasons of the John Calipari coaching era, the Wildcats were not a good tournament team.
Kentucky has not won more than one game in an SEC Tournament since 2017-18.
UK has not won more than one contest in an NCAA Tournament since 2018-19.
In Calipari’s final four years, UK went 1-4 in the SEC Tournament and 1-3 in the NCAA Tournament.
During his pre-Kentucky career, Pope went 14-15 in postseason tournament contests.
At Utah Valley, Pope was 3-4 in the Western Athletic Conference Tournament and 4-3 in the College Basketball Invitational.
For BYU, Pope went 4-4 in the West Coast Conference Tournament, 2-1 in the NIT and 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament.
In Year 1 at Kentucky, Pope doesn’t have to win tournament championships to be deemed a success. It would be nice, however, if UK could finally manage to again win multiple games in both the SEC and NCAA tournaments.
This story was originally published February 10, 2025 at 5:18 PM.
