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. Kentucky coach Mark Pope talks about how to defend Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic,
one of the most prolific 3-point shooters in America, ahead of the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament game against the Cyclones. By NCAA 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.
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