Even Kentucky haters of the highest order will find themselves liking Mark Pope
The Champions Classic annually provides information on four college hoops teams that usually matter — check out C.J. Moore’s resulting film analysis of Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State — and that also means valuable hints about the season in general. This year’s Champions Classic cemented a huge shift in college basketball fandom.
Hating Kentucky isn’t cool or fun anymore because Kentucky’s coach is both. Mark Pope is relentlessly likable, which means Kentucky basketball has become likable. Adjust accordingly.
Now, “cool” doesn’t work in every sense of the word, not for a 6-foot man who exudes the energy of a chemistry teacher towering over his students as he offers kind words of encouragement. Pope is Mr. Vargas in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but with a dry-erase board and no hair.
Just as Vargas was the only teacher who could get Jeff Spicoli excited to learn something, Pope had his assembled first team figure out how to beat Duke — perhaps the most talented team in the country — 77-72 on Tuesday in Atlanta. Pope is a former Rhodes Scholarship candidate and a medical student at Columbia who clearly knows how to teach as well as learn.
That may not sound cool, and in fact his wife, Lee Anne, addressed that same word in Brendan Quinn’s profile of Pope, saying, “You know, someone said to me, ‘He’s crazy.’ But no. He’s not crazy. He’s just – in a world where everyone is cool, he’s not too cool. And there is a big difference. He’s brilliant. He is authentic. And he’s going to outsmart everyone. I know.”
There was a movie last night 😼 pic.twitter.com/5IbNodYT3J
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) November 13, 2024
But authenticity and perspective are cool, and they stem from Pope, who told Quinn that if being a coach at Kentucky is “all you are,” you won’t succeed. That story centers on Pope’s relationships with his wife and four daughters, adding to a public spotlight on Pope that makes his new job serving the most passionate fan base in… American sports even more fascinating?
It also adds to an interesting time for the blue bloods. Pope defeated Jon Scheyer, who is entering a pivotal third season as the kind, mild-mannered successor to hated (by non-Duke fans) basketball overlord Mike Krzyzewski. Non-North Carolina fans had very few nice things to say about Roy “Aw Shucks” Williams – Hubert Davis is much easier to like. Bill Self, himself a purveyor extraordinaire, is the only old head left. As any non-Kansas fan will tell you, it won’t be hard to find someone who gets on your nerves less than he does.
Pope, meanwhile, replaces John Calipari, which is a leap in sympathy. But ten years ago it would have been parasailing over the Grand Canyon. At the rate Cal is going, he could be a favored underdog by the time he’s done at Arkansas. He became somewhat of a sympathetic figure (for non-Kentucky fans) in recent years due to his early exit from the NCAA with loaded teams, betrayed in part by Calipari’s inability to modernize stylistically.
Kentucky fans got angrier and angrier at him, while everyone else connected better with his jokes when he wasn’t destroying the competition every night. Hey, he’s kind of cute when he loses! Now his pressers are in Arkansas, where he will either fade or prove he has a renaissance in him, events not to be missed. Compare that to one certain UMass presser from 30 years agowhile everyone (except UMass fans, I think) wished John Chaney had harassed him a little.
When Calipari got the Kentucky job in 2009 after violating NCAA rules at Memphis that people didn’t know existed, the prevailing sentiment in the sport was, “Kentucky sold its soul.”
That’s where most of the dislike came from. Calipari was a convenient villain for everyone, with his teams full of NBA players who spent a forced year in college, when paying players was still seen as a crime and other coaches swimming in the same waters could ‘buy their way out of the crowd’ erase’. strict supervision.
If you lost a recruit back then, point the finger at the cheaters. Now there is no bogeyman. Just you and your collective. The same goes for fans. So much energy was spent on co-opting renegades on your team and your law-abiding coach. We are in an age of forced introspection. And talent compensation.
These are the conditions that make it harder to craft villains. Leaving aside the impossible-to-hate Tubby Smith, and leaving aside the very early days of Rick Pitino when he should have upset Christian Laettner and the basketball overlord, and with all due respect to the parties Billy Gillispie threw, the Kentucky basketball coach becomes supposed to be a despised villain.
Pope is not. And that goes beyond the era we’re in, and he’s immediately a refreshing change from Calipari, even the late-stage version known as Commiserative Cal.
Pope isn’t just taking over a legendary program; he likes the place because he co-captained Pitino’s absurdly loaded 1996 national championship team. Pope clearly wasn’t Kentucky’s first — or second — or third — choice. He has to prove himself. Instant likeability points.
It is learned from the program that he is as lacking in self-interest as he appears to be in public. He emphasizes reaching former players. He honors history and shows his team clips from legendary Duke-UK matches dating back to the 1970s, before Tuesday’s tilt.
Pope’s joy is in basketball itself. This roster, which was completely empty upon his arrival, is not full of first-round picks. But it is well constructed. The Wildcats play a five-out system built around cutting, passing and long-range shooting. It’s a pleasure to watch. And to hear coached.
Did you see ESPN’s intervention in a papal meeting during Tuesday’s game? The man is seven behind Duke in his first big game at Kentucky, he doesn’t have anyone who can realistically guard Cooper Flagg, and he’s calmly talking about the fundamentals. Cheerful even.
“We’ve gone a little too much on the offensive, so let’s make real declarative cuts now, okay?” Pope said to his players. “Declarative cuts.”
A sentence is the only thing that can be explanatory. That declarative sentence, as Professor Pope has shown before us, is imprecise. This guy adds to the basketball lexicon and shows how cool basketball nerddom can be.
And college basketball can’t help but like him. At least until he wins enough for Kentucky fans to love him.
(Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
