Mark Pope removes John Calipari's NBA player banners from Kentucky's practice gym
Mark Pope has made it a focus to keep the main thing the main thing, which, in his new job with Kentucky Basketball, is national championships. With that, he has made a change inside the Wildcats’ gym at the Joe Craft Center to better center their attention.
As further revealed earlier on this morning, the Wildcats no longer have the photos of the former players on the walls that went pro under John Calipari. Instead, all that remains hung up are the eight title banners for Kentucky.
ESPN’s Jimmy Dykes noted this difference on Friday in an interview on Kentucky Sports Radio. When he attended practice on Thursday, that was something that he immediately realized once he stepped onto their court.
“The first thing I noticed when I walked in the practice facility, all of those individual banners are down,” Dykes said to KSR. “The only thing left on the wall is the national championships. That’s the standard. It’s about hanging those banners.
“It’s a new day for Kentucky.”
This topic has been a sore subject for those in the bluegrass as they move on from Calipari to Pope.
Calipari did a lot right during his decade and a half in Lexington. He won 410 games as part of a .769 winning percentage, won 11 conference titles in total, and made a dozen appearances in the NCAA Tournament with seven runs to the Elite Eight, four to the Final Four, and two to the national title game with one win in 2012.
Coach Cal also had plenty of player success from recruitments to college careers to the draft. Specifically focusing on the NBA Draft, 50 Wildcats were selections over his tenure. That includes 37 in the first round, 25 in the lottery, and three at No. 1 overall.
However, the on-court success and personal achievement weren’t correlating as they’d once done over the last several seasons. Since ’20-’21, Kentucky has gone 80-46 (.635) overall. The Wildcats won no conference titles and none of their three berths in March Madness went past the opening weekend. Still, the process continued with nine players drafted off of those teams to the association and there being little left to show for it back in college.
That, among other reasons, is why Calipari now finds himself at Arkansas. It’s also why Pope, an alumni and national champion, was seen as perfect to become the next head coach.
It’s not as though Kentucky doesn’t want draft-level talent on their roster anymore or hopes to forget all about those who are now succeeding in the NBA. Pope is just fixating himself and his program on the sole thing that he wants them to have as their goal in a ninth national championship at UK.