Mark Pope confirmed as Kentucky’s basketball coach. ‘Hanging a banner is the expectation.’

Following a brief but eventful search that included some of the biggest names in college basketball, the University of Kentucky has chosen one of its own.

Mark Pope will be the school’s next men’s basketball coach.

UK officially announced Friday morning that Pope has been hired to lead the Wildcats’ program.

“Mark Pope not only brings an impressive record in nine years as a head coach, but also a love of the University of Kentucky and a complete understanding of what our program means to the people of our state,” UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart said in a statement. “As a captain on the ’96 championship team, Mark was a beloved and respected teammate. As a head coach, he is highly regarded nationally as an innovator. His teams run a unique and dynamic up-tempo offense and they get after it on defense. He is a strong recruiter with international ties and a person of integrity.

“He fully embraces our high expectations and standards and I know that as our fans get reacquainted with Mark, they will be eager to join him on what promises to be an exciting ride.”

Barnhart zeroed in on Pope — the head coach at BYU for the past five seasons — Thursday after Baylor’s Scott Drew, UConn’s Dan Hurley and the Chicago Bulls’ Billy Donovan were all linked to the job.

“The University of Kentucky is the pinnacle of coaching in college basketball,” Pope said in a statement. “It’s the definition of blue-blood program, where hanging a banner is the expectation every year. Equally as important, UK changed my life forever as a human being. The love and passion I have for this program, this University and the people of the Commonwealth goes to the depth of my soul.

“I’m thankful to Dr. (Eli) Capilouto and Mitch Barnhart for this opportunity. I’m proud to be your next head coach and I can’t wait to do this together!”

The position at Kentucky opened up Tuesday, when John Calipari announced he was stepping aside after 15 years in charge of the program. Calipari, who went to four Final Fours and won the 2012 national title at Kentucky, was introduced as the new head coach at Arkansas the following day.

Pope has a 110-51 overall record in five seasons at BYU, leading the Cougars to NCAA Tournament berths in 2021 and 2024. His team was also on track to make the March Madness field in 2020 — his first season as the Cougars’ coach — projected as a 6 seed before the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

BYU lost in the first round in both of its NCAA Tournament appearances under Pope, who played at Kentucky under Rick Pitino from 1994-96 and was also on campus for the 1993-94 season after transferring to UK from Washington.

Pope started 14 of 69 games in his two seasons on the court for the Wildcats, averaging 9.4 points and 6.8 rebounds over the course of his Kentucky career and playing a key supporting role on the Wildcats’ beloved 1996 national championship squad, which finished with a 34-2 record, delivered UK its first NCAA title in 18 years and remains one of the greatest teams in the storied history of the program.

Pope graduated from the university in 1996 and — after spending nearly a decade as a professional basketball player, including six seasons in the NBA — completed two years of medical school before jumping into coaching.

He began his career on the sidelines as an assistant at Georgia under head coach Mark Fox during the 2009-10 season — coincidentally, Calipari’s first in charge of the Wildcats’ program — and then worked as an assistant coach at Wake Forest and BYU before landing his first head coaching job at Utah Valley in 2015.

Pope led the Wolverines to three postseason appearances — playing in the CBI each time — in his four years with the school. He was named the head coach at BYU for the 2019-20 season.

Calipari spent 15 years in Lexington — the second-longest-tenured coach in program history behind only Adolph Rupp — and Pope will become just the seventh man to lead the Wildcats since Rupp left UK in 1972 after spending 42 years on the Kentucky sidelines.

Kentucky’s search lands on Pope

The revelation that Pope would be the next head coach of the Wildcats was a stunning turn of events late Thursday night, just the second full day of Barnhart’s search following Calipari’s resignation earlier in the week.

Drew, who has spent the past 21 seasons at Baylor and led the Bears to the 2021 national championship, engaged in discussions with Kentucky shortly after Calipari stepped down and emerged as the early favorite to be the school’s next coach. Drew announced Thursday morning that he was staying put in Waco, a day after members of his family flew from Texas to Kentucky, touring Lexington before a return trip home that same night.

Hurley, who led UConn to its second consecutive NCAA championship Monday night, said repeatedly — beginning in his postgame press conference following the national title victory — that he intended to remain the Huskies’ head coach. He also removed his name from consideration Thursday, not long after Drew announced that he would stay at Baylor.

Donovan, who won back-to-back NCAA titles with Florida in 2006 and ’07, was also linked to the Kentucky job, which he turned down the last two times it was open — in 2007 and 2009 — to remain in Gainesville before later jumping to the NBA in 2015, one year after leading the Gators to a fourth Final Four during his tenure.

The Herald-Leader was told that UK officials reached out Tuesday to gauge Donovan’s interest in becoming the Wildcats’ next head coach, but Kentucky did not seriously pursue him as a candidate for the job after it was made clear that he would not engage in talks while the Bulls were still playing their 2023-24 season. Chicago has qualified for the NBA’s Play-In Tournament, and April 17 was the earliest date that its season could be finished.

Former Villanova head coach Jay Wright — a two-time NCAA champion and now a broadcaster with CBS Sports — confirmed before Monday night’s national title game that he would not be interested in the impending Kentucky opening. By that point, it had become clear that Calipari was on the verge of accepting the Arkansas head coaching position.

Alabama’s Nate Oats, who led the Crimson Tide to their first Final Four appearance in program history this season, released a statement Monday night saying he was staying in Tuscaloosa.

With Calipari waiting until Tuesday to step down at Kentucky — and Barnhart not formally beginning his search until the job was actually available — neither Wright nor Oats were approached as serious candidates.

With Drew and Hurley making their intentions clear Thursday — and Donovan occupied through at least next week — Barnhart immediately targeted Pope to be Kentucky’s next head coach.

The Pope era at Kentucky

What can the Wildcats expect from their next head coach? And what will Pope find waiting for him in Lexington?

Kentucky’s new coach is likely to have to build a 2024-25 roster almost completely from scratch.

Calipari left behind 10 underclassmen with remaining college eligibility from last season’s team, which earned a 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament before an upset loss to 14-seeded Oakland in the first round, leaving the Cats with a 23-10 overall record. Few, if any, of those 10 players are expected to return to the program next season.

Several of UK’s players have already announced their departures — either for the NBA draft or the transfer portal — and Calipari’s vaunted 2024 recruiting class, which was ranked No. 2 nationally behind Duke, will also be decimated by the time Pope settles into his new job.

National freshman of the year Reed Sheppard is the team’s top remaining player who has yet to announce a decision regarding his immediate basketball future. Sheppard’s father, Jeff Sheppard, was teammates with Pope at UK — a tie that could help the Wildcats retain him for next season — but the current Wildcat is projected as a lottery pick in the 2024 NBA draft and widely expected to go pro this offseason.

Of the six recruits that had committed to Calipari in the 2024 class, it’s possible that Travis Perry — Kentucky’s reigning Mr. Basketball and the state’s all-time leading scorer — will be the only one who actually shows up on campus this summer, with top prospects Somto Cyril, Karter Knox and Jayden Quaintance already reopening their recruitments earlier in the week.

Point guard Boogie Fland and shooting guard Billy Richmond, the son of one of Calipari’s former players, are the only other members of UK’s recruiting class, and they’re also expected to explore other options in the coming days.

Pope was expected to return a solid foundation of players at BYU, which was No. 14 in ESPN’s “way-too-early” preseason Top 25 rankings, released shortly after the national title game Monday night.

Much of that projected Cougars’ roster consisted of returning players, and it’s possible that Pope will be able to bring some of them to Lexington via the transfer portal. However he builds his first roster at Kentucky, it’s almost certain to feature plenty of players currently unknown to UK fans.

The next few weeks are bound to be eventful as Pope puts together his coaching staff and works toward filling out that 2024-25 roster. His first game on the Rupp Arena sidelines — a return to the place he called home nearly 30 years ago as a college player — is less than seven months away.

Between now and then, there’s plenty of work to be done.

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