Ask Mark Anything: Is Kentucky’s Mark Pope a good basketball coach?
This week’s edition of “Ask Mark Anything” features questions about Mark Pope’s coaching acumen, UK men’s basketball recruiting and the ongoing search for Mitch Barnhart’s replacement as Kentucky athletics director.
Let’s get to it.
Question one comes from Jimmie Abshire on Facebook: “Would you consider Mark Pope successful or not as head coach?”
Mark’s reply: In his head coaching tenure prior to Kentucky, I think Mark Pope proved to be a good, not a great, coach.
At Utah Valley in 2015, Pope inherited a program that had gone 11-19 in the previous season.
Over four years, Pope built the Wolverines from 12-18 to 17-17 to 23-11 and 25-10.
Pope won 20 games in four of his five seasons at BYU and took the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament twice — and there would have been a third March Madness trip had the coronavirus not canceled the 2020 NCAA tourney in a year in which a 24-8 BYU team was going to make the field of 68.
At Kentucky, I thought Pope did a good job of roster construction and a solid coaching job in his first season. When healthy, that 2024-25 UK team was capable of competing with the top teams in the country, as it showed by beating eventual NCAA champion Florida and Final Four team Duke.
Last year, in Pope’s second season, I thought the roster construction was not great, and I think that was the biggest factor in what was very much an up-and-down UK season.
In fairness, both of Pope’s teams at Kentucky have been afflicted by season-ending and/or debilitating injuries to key players.
As I wrote out of the Cats’ loss to Iowa State in the 2026 NCAA Tournament, the quest for Pope in year three is to put a team on the court that “looks like Kentucky.”
All of which is to say I think Mark Pope over his full career has proven he is a good basketball coach — but still needs to prove he can be “Kentucky good.”
Question two comes from @lr_stew on X: “When do we hear the good news?”
Mark’s reply: On an existential plane, “the good news” can come in many forms at any time if only one is open to receiving it.
In the context of sports, I am going to surmise this is a question about Kentucky possibly getting a commitment from Iowa State transfer forward Milan Momcilovic.
The consensus in the “recruiting press” seems to be that the 6-foot-8 sharpshooter will pick a new school by the end of the coming weekend.
Of the schools said to be recruiting Momcilovic the hardest — Arizona, Kentucky and Louisville — I think UK has the greatest need and would, therefore, make sense as the choice.
So we should know soon whether this particular “good news” is incoming for the BBN.
Question three comes from Gary Taylor on Facebook: “Have you asked yourself why major (men’s basketball recruiting) targets list UK in their top five and (Kentucky has) not been able to secure any of them?”
Mark’s reply: I don’t have to ask myself. Anytime I put out a prompt for questions for this mailbag, I get multiple submissions about UK’s perceived men’s basketball recruiting failures.
In the 2025 recruiting class, Mark Pope and Kentucky signed the players ranked No. 24 (Jasper Johnson), No. 27 (Malachi Moreno) and No. 33 (Braydon Hawthorne) in the 24/7 Sports Composite Rankings.
I thought that was an acceptable level of recruiting.
Obviously, the 2026 high school class has pretty much been a wash for Kentucky.
Among the “recruiting geeks,” it seems an article of faith that UK could have landed at least one top 10 prospect if the Wildcats had prioritized that particular player rather than going all in on Tyran Stokes (the No. 1 player in the 2026 24/7 Sports Composite).
The thing I didn’t understand about the Stokes recruitment is that, based on things that both he and others in his “camp” said about Kentucky as far back as last summer, it seemed clear he was never going to come to UK.
That’s why I didn’t understand why Kentucky went to the bitter end of that recruitment — which ended with Stokes choosing Kansas.
Question four comes from “GM” via email: “I’ve been surprised there’s no buzz around Martin Newton for the UK AD job. Why do you think that is?”
Mark’s reply: Martin Newton has been the athletics director at Samford, his college alma mater, since 2011. He is also the chairman of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for 2026-27.
As the son of former Kentucky AD C.M. Newton and a former aide to John Calipari with the UK men’s basketball program from 2009 through 2011, Martin Newton has obvious ties to the University of Kentucky.
I think the reason why his name has not been speculated upon much as a potential replacement for the retiring Mitch Barnhart is because there are five sitting power-conference ADs — Alabama’s Greg Byrne; Auburn’s John Cohen; Florida’s Scott Stricklin; Minnesota’s Mark Coyle; and Oregon’s Rob Mullens — who have previously worked at UK.
Whether any of those five would even consider returning to Kentucky is unclear, but that is where most of the speculation has centered.
It is going to be interesting to see if UK even makes a conventional AD hire. There is ample speculation Kentucky may look to the worlds of professional sports or private business in search of an executive who can, as they say, “drive revenue.”
