Lol Pope wouldn’t even be in the top 20 on the coaching list if he didn’t play here. With that mediocre resume…
Pope is a disaster
- Thread starter seccats04
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It’s honestly mind boggling what has become of us. It’s not like we don’t have the money to compete. Only a pure retard AD could mess up a program like ours.
We can only pray. A real administration would have fired him a decade ago.
Depending on how the rest of this season plays out will determine if Popegets another year.
10 conference games left.
Let’s say, best scenario in my opinion, is 7-3. That’s extremely optimistic.
In my opinion, I can see 3-7. Let’s say that happens, that would put us at 8-10, and looking at an NIT invitation. That will get Pope fired.
10 conference games left.
Let’s say, best scenario in my opinion, is 7-3. That’s extremely optimistic.
In my opinion, I can see 3-7. Let’s say that happens, that would put us at 8-10, and looking at an NIT invitation. That will get Pope fired.
I don’t understand how we have a coach who was a legit big man player, but can’t teach big men how to get better at basketball.
Can we hire the JMU AD as our AD. Apparently they know how to hire coaches.
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We have plenty of money to be competitive. The issue is the coach and the AD/President 100%. We need to get actual board members who care about producing winning teams and run the AD like it should be with a real AD. One that will actually hire good coaches in the important sports and fire the ones quickly who aren’t. While also not signing them to lifetime contracts with 80 million dollar buyouts for a single S16 or music city bowl win.
If that is the case then I don’t understand why they don’t just do that from the tip. It’s obvious they have no idea what to do for whoever they play.
We live to support our great program. We hate to see us continually slip down to a lower and lower tier of teams. How much long should we have to wait to watch a team that our proud program deserves to watch? It’s been 10 years since we have been to a final 4.
You are part of the problem, support any crap that gets put on a platter in front of your face. Consume product is all you all do. No standards and you all don’t live in reality. Just support and hope. Toxic positivity.
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Nope. You lump Pope in with Cal which is bullcrap, "last 10 years wah, wah, wah".
Pope is having a bad year, no question. One good year, one bad (half)year. Thats what he is responsible for. Wanting to fire a guy for one bad season is crybaby nonsense
Mitch sucks but we definitely had January bowls. We also had a good bowl run, for UK football standards. Had very little to do with him.
Carry on with the well deserved Mitch bashing.
So many one dimensional thinkers these days, right? People forgot what nuance is
Idk what other programs look like, but everything at UK is outsourced. You can look at the list of Mitch employees and legitimately wonder what it is they do.
Marc hill seems to be in the protege role. Rock oliver does god knows what but is widely known as Mitch's confidant. Rachael Baker is married to a key jmi executive, so i guess that's her role or maybe his.
Whoever handled the stein hiring should be in control and Mitch should be out. We know Mitch had no hand in it because
1) how fast it moved. Mitch took days courting drew and his family. By contrast stein was vetted and ready months prior in case the wheels fell off.
2) how reasonable the stein contract is. He was a MUCH hotter candidate than Pope and we got him for MUCH better terms. No one else wanted pope but us and he would've crawled here. We still managed to massively overpay AND guarantee a chunk of it. Only mitch.
It was the same last season. He embarrassed UK last year too. He got a pass because of how the team was thrown together.
Not prepared last year for anyone. Got behind almost every game and got bailed out by the players. Quit against Ohio St, Arkansas, Auburn and Alabama last year.
As bad as Vandy was it wasn’t even close to the worst performance this season.
Pope has not only shown that he doesn’t know how to change this, he’s provided the roadmap on how to get to this point.
Before Tuesday’s game he needed to be first at the end of this season.
After that walkabout he needed to fired in Nashville.
Pope has embarrassed UK basketball too many times to count.
Injuries and bad luck have nothing to do with the product he is putting on the floor.
Our supposed star that’s what, 24 years old?, just walks out of bounds with the ball and he and the coach just act like it’s an everyday thing.
And it is. I would love for Pope to describe what he thinks the assignment is.
He certainly has a different assignment in mind that any UK fan.
You are proving my point. In what world did he embarrass the program? When he got here late, woth literally ZERO on the roster, most rational people were saying a .500 record in the toughest conference in America would be a good first year. Instead, he put together a team that went to the S16, despite losing key players to injuries. If he has luck with health last season, he may well have made the FF. Now, you are pulling your pacifier out and moving the goal posts. If you think last season was an embarrassment, then you are basketball braindead.
He is having a bad year this season at 14-7. If his roster weren't racked with injuries, they would be 17-4 or 16-5. So for you, injuries are the coaches fault, fire him.
And you wonder why top coaches keep telling UK to stick their money where the sun doesn't shine when we come calling....
How so?
Tubby got pushed out after 10 years. Cal got shoved out after 15. How did we give Tubby a longer leash?
Tubby won a title in his first year in 1998. We had people screaming for his firing in 2000 after he got a 5 seed, which was the first time since 1987 UK wasn’t a 1-3 seed in tournaments we were eligible to play in. By 2003, Tubby’s seat was white hot, but he cooled the flames with 3 really good regular seasons 03-05. The 2006 season was a a disaster and 2007 was worse and the fanbase had completely turned against him, just like we did with Cal after Oakland.
A real UK fan would know this, which leads me to believe you’re an Arkansas fan trolling in bad faith at worst or a UK fan so young you only know Cal’s tenure at best.
Your revisionist history is full of crap. He did not embarrass us last year. The vast majority of the people thought he had is on the right track to getting back to where we needed to be.. sweet 16 for the first time in at least five years and 10 win against top 25 team teams which hadn't happened in those same five years minimally. I totally agree that this year sucks and is very disappointing but it's not over and we currently sit at five and three in the SEC in fourth place I believe after a 5 game winning streak. I believe that Pope and Barnhardt need to go but not during the middle of the year.
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Here is how he embarrasses us. What exactly has he won? He has lost more games by 20+ in 1- 1/2 seasons than any coach in Kentucky history. I bet Pitino didn’t lose as many games by 20+ in his entire tenure, I’d be shocked if Calipari did as well.
As of early 2026, Mark Pope's record as head coach at Kentucky is approximately 33-19 overall in his first 50-plus games
19 losses in 52 games. That is absolute garbage. It is embarrassing. At this rate he may be a .500 coach with a reported 22 million dollar roster.
For reference it took John Calipari 133 games before he lost #19!
Every game we go out and get down 20 while shooting 20% from the field embarrasses us.
Sure last year was decent. Some fun games and some injuries, but at the end of the day he still lost 12 games. He had a lot of ranked wins, he dealt with injuries fairly well, and he seemed to be trending decently up. The warning signs were there though.This season shows that that was probably the height of his tenure and that even with all the resources needed this is the roster he choose to recruit. Next year looks even worse.
This is Kentucky, not Rhode Island. We are not satisfied with 6th place finishes in conference, no titles of any kind, and a sweet 16 where we were yet again blown out for not showing up. Followed up by a season we may not even make the tournament. That’s ridiculous in an age where you can buy any player you want.
That is embarrassing to all the Kentucky fans that I know.
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For the Pope defenders, do you actually think he will have any sustained success here? You keep defending his lack of success as a head coach during his career, but do you actually think he will magically be better in the future? What evidence do you have for that? I'm genuinely curious.
I could see still defending Pope (and blaming poor roster construction and multiple key injuries) for this lackluster season. But only if two conditions were true... The remaining players played with heart, determination, and no quit (I actually wouldn't care about losing if we lost giving everything they had and coming up short) with the roster we have left. And secondly if we had ANY commitments of recruits to shed some hope on next season. Currently we have a write off year (insert excuse here, injuries, tough schedule, roster construction, bad luck, whatever), and a run it back year three minus Oweh, Aberdeen, and JQ at the bare minimum if everybody else stayed which will likely not happen either. So we are hitching our wagon to portal prayers again to replace scoring and production. I 100 percent want Pope to succeed, hope he turns it around and finds some way to salvage the season and surprises us with a 5* commit. For as fanatical as BBN is, and prone to over-reaction, I think we all just want to feel excitement about our program. Like we did when Pope was first hired, or when that group of misfits thrown together in the 11th hour would shock the likes of Duke and Florida with heart, grit, and effort. The LSU game was great for replacing that kind of feeling in the moment. But when you look at it with a wider lens it's like, why were we down that bad to begin with? Why did it take a miracle to beat LSU? The highs of the season (beating UT, St Johns and Indiana) have been really mild compared to the lows (Blowing the UNC game, blowing the Missouri game, and getting dog walked and curb stomped by MSU, Gonzaga, and Vandy... losing to Little Brother, Alabama still undefeated against Pope... All the crystal ball recruits supposed to be headed UK's way falling off or changing to other schools...)
BBN is tired, the drought is real, everyone else caught up while we got worse slowly over the last 10 years. Still hope, for the program's sake, Pope turns this around. He is still our coach and deserves that. But I just don't expect it to happen.
BBN is tired, the drought is real, everyone else caught up while we got worse slowly over the last 10 years. Still hope, for the program's sake, Pope turns this around. He is still our coach and deserves that. But I just don't expect it to happen.
I have very high hopes for Mark Pope and I thought he was the perfect person to take the Kentucky head coach job. I had followed his teams before he arrived at UK and was very impressed with the system his teams ran and I wanted him to replace John Calipari before there was even any thought that Calipari would leave so I was ecstatic when UK hired Mark Pope. However now I wonder why UK players cannot block out for rebounds cannot guard their man do not run decent plays and constantly get beat down the floor. These are the same things that I had problems with Calipari's teams. Little things like not having out of bounds plays to get the ball inbounds instead of just throwing it up and having the man go up and get the ball. All these things and many more point to an inability to teach fundamental basketball. If you need an example of a team with lots of talent every year but does not play with fundamentals just watch the Memphis team every year. Loaded with talent but can't play up to their talent. A team that always has great fundamentals and plays better than their talent is Michigan State, they do all the fundamentals and always play well. This season Kentucky looks more like Memphis than Michigan State.
Are you mentally retarded? Seriously? These guys are being paid a lot of money to represent our program. I’ll “crap” on them every time they embarrass our proud program. They’ve done it numerous times this season, including a 35 point loss against Gonzaga, in what was essentially, a home game.
Take your pathetic self some where else.
I guess you’re also fine with the “Touch Money” locker room huddle break.
Get lost.
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You get lost coward. You talk crap about the players and coaches until they win something and then you pretend you are this die hard fan. You're a joke
Coward? You’re a joke. Keep jock sniffing. Win something? WTF are you talking about?
How old are you? 12?
Last year team was made built relatively well because Pope didn’t have time to recruit and overthink.
The last year was playing okay because they were very experienced guys from smaller programs that understood basketball and were willing to play And learn.
the injuries derailed last year season but there were plenty of games where Pope completely didnt prepare well and we lost : Clemson, Bama, Ohio State, Arkansas, etc…
This year Pope had 22 million and time to recruit and overthink and get buried in his stats and the results are clear ….
If Pope gets fired I hope the Administration will ask Pat Riley for help during the coaching search!
Pope simply doesn't have enough shooters on this roster, and the way he prefers to coach offense, he needs them, like last year. Defense is another story. He cares more about the university than putting people in the NBA and that means a lot to me.
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This team is a disaster with injuries, and lack of identity. Pope is a good coach and will do well, this year is not going to be an example of it. Changes need to be made, I am not ready to give up on Pope though.
serious question for you and people who think like this. Why do you think it will be better next year when we have 0 recruits. All signs are pointing to us being even worse as we lose players and game nothing.
