Mark Pope claims Rick Pitino 'changed my life'

Mark Pope will always carry the lessons he learned playing for Rick Pitino at Kentucky with him throughout his coaching career. It was that experience, which included winning a national championship in 1996, that ultimately brought Pope back to Lexington to take over the Wildcats.

Pope explained that Pitino was a tough coach to play for who always demanded the best from him. However, at the same time he always had an unwavering belief in his players. He’s since developed his own coaching style, but taking elements of Pitino’s along with him.

“I get emotional about coach,” he said on the College Hoops Today podcast with Jon Rothstein. “It’s harder to do now because we just have to do it different to help these young people go and shepherd them through growth. Coach P, it was a combination of things. He’s just the most relentless person I’ve ever been around in my life. It was all the definitions of relentless, but in this sense I’ll just say oppressive pressure. It was just relentless pressure every single second and every single aspect of your life. The kind that made you feel like you didn’t know if you could face another day. But then you did and there’s this incredibly deep-seeded confidence that comes from that.

“Then he had an unending spring of belief. His belief and faith is never-ending. There is never a situation that coach doesn’t think he can work his way out of. There’s never a limit to what he believes his players can become. He’s always thinking about what you can become. He sees you how you are now clearly. And whether it’s putting the fear of God in you or it’s pushing you harder than you’ve ever been pushed, he refuses to stop until you become something more than you ever actually thought you could be.”

Pope began his college career at Washington before transferring to play two seasons at Kentucky under Pitino. He went on to spend six seasons in the NBA, serving stints with the Pacers, Nuggets and Bucks.

Pope originally didn’t plan to pursue coaching as he enrolled in medical school at Columbia University following his pro career. However, he left medical school in 2009 to join the staff at Georgia as director of basketball operations and has remained in the profession ever since.

He got his first opportunity as a head coach in 2015 at Utah Valley and later turned that into a job at BYU, where he worked from 2019 up until this offseason when he accepted the Kentucky job. Pope understands the importance of this position more than anybody as an alum, and also knows that his path wouldn’t have happened if not for those early days with Pitino.

“He changed my life and he did it in all those ways,” he said. “He didn’t do it by bringing me in the office and having heart-to-heart talks. He did it by painting a very clear vision and dragging me, pushing me, growing me and prodding me so I could become something a little bit better than I was before.”