Mark Pope opens up on potential late additions to coaching staff

Mark Pope usually likes to be slow and methodical when it comes to building his coaching staff. However, he wasn’t allowed that luxury during his transition to Kentucky this offseason.

Pope was forced to move quickly in that regard in order to piece together a team for the upcoming season after most of Kentucky’s roster left for Arkansas with John Calipari or hit the portal to play somewhere else.

The dust has settled and Kentucky has its team in Lexington prepping for the upcoming season. Now that everyone is in place, Pope believes there’s still a couple of moves left to be made on his initial staff.

“Fitting the pieces together is so important to me, so you readjust your thinking every time you add a new piece. You’ve got to readjust and evaluate and reevaluate,” Pope explained in a press conference earlier this week.

“We’re at the point with potentially a last staff spot or two about not reevaluating personnel, but reevaluating positions and features of what a job would look like. That, actually, is taking longer. I’m really glad that we’ve crossed over the threshold of where I get to see the staff on the court now interacting with the players in terms of teaching and instructing and pushing and communicating. I’m getting to see the staff in a new light the last week and a couple of days.”

Pope has put together a staff featuring associate head coach Alvin Brooks III and assistants Mark Fox, Cody Fueger and Jason Hart. Kentucky most recently added Mikhail McLean to an assistant coaching role in June.

Now that Pope’s personnel is on campus and practicing, adding another assistant coach based on the team’s needs could become a reality by the end of the summer.

“As we take in all that information, all of that is kind of going to filter into the last spot or two about how we reevaluate what that job is even gonna look like,” Pope continued. “And also, we’re getting a sense, as we talk about every single day, the landscape of college basketball has changed so dramatically that there’s this real push about, like, ‘Man, if I end up with exactly the same staff that I would have had three years ago that hasn’t been reactionary to the massive changes in college basketball, then I might miss something.’

“So, we’re trying to figure all of that out. We already have a couple of positions that are a little bit unique and different and we’re trying to feel out the last few spots.”