Mark Pope believes you must understand what it means to play at Kentucky to succeed at Kentucky

An old friend used to say this program isn’t for everyone — it just isn’t. Kentucky basketball can chew you up and spit you out faster than the words “Go Big Blue” can come out of your mouth. It’s a pressure cooker that can create gourmet meals with the right ingredients or stuff you wouldn’t feed to your dog if the recipe is a hair off. Will you make it as a Wildcat? Mark Pope believes there is one key to that answer being yes.

It’s an understanding of the responsibility you have wearing that uniform with Kentucky across your chest. Appreciation is one thing, but accepting that you are sacrificing your own individual desires for the greater good of a team and program — with individual success coming as a result of that team and program success — is the difference between making it and not.

How quickly do those conversations come up with recruits and portal targets? Immediately. How long are those qualities prioritized? Through the very end.

“I think it’s both actually. I think it’s the beginning and the end, because it matters,” Pope said of the importance of Kentucky basketball on his checklist when recruiting players. “There’s nowhere like this, and if you come in here not understanding or appreciating that, I actually think your chances of success are not very high, to some level.”

It’s not a perfect science, obviously, because you can’t understand what it means entirely until you walk in those shoes. Seeing it is different than living it.

That doesn’t mean you can’t prepare yourself for the inevitable, though. You can understand the challenge and appreciate what you’re signing up for — what some of the all-time greats of the sport signed up for. You’re joining the ultimate college basketball fraternity, and you can’t go in not totally committed to representing it well.

“I mean, nobody can really understand this until you live it, right? But the guys that are really successful here come in with a healthy respect for what this is — because it requires more, actually,” Pope said. “It requires more ability to be non-distracted. It requires more of a giving heart. It requires more of an idea that there’s something bigger than yourself. It requires more of an ability to sacrifice a little bit and understand that by sacrificing a little bit of yourself, it actually elevates you, right?

“That’s what’s great about this beautiful team sport of basketball that we have. When you learn that concept of, like, if I give a little bit of myself, it actually elevates myself, right?”

You can be a good basketball players without being at Kentucky — we see hundreds do it every year, thousands have over time. There are only a dozen-plus that get the opportunity to do so each cycle, so it’s a two-way street. If you get the chance to do so and you turn it down, though, you’re giving up the opportunity to reach legendary status in ways you simply can’t find anywhere else.

You can get rich and earn the stats, but becoming immortal in this space? That’s a Kentucky thing.

“We were just doing a media shoot about this chance to become immortal and how you get there. The pathway to get there is very different than this world wants to teach us. Understanding and having some concept of what Kentucky basketball means is a vital part from the very first phone call to the very last pre-commitment conversation,” Pope said. “There are a lot of guys that don’t really get that. They’re going to go be great basketball players, they just won’t be great basketball players here — because this place is different.”

Last year’s group is the perfect example of that. Guys like Lamont Butler, Amari Williams, Koby Brea, Jaxson Robinson, Andrew Carr and Ansley Almonor? Their legacies are forever. They set the standard others now have to follow — and the bar is high.

“You need to understand that if you want to come play here — well, not if you want to come play here, but if you’re going to accept the incredible opportunity to come play here, you have to understand that. If you don’t understand, you’re just not going to be successful. If you do understand it, you’re going to be crazy successful. Our guys last season set a beautiful, brilliant standard of what it means to be a Kentucky basketball player.

“We actually are leaning on them a lot as we try and describe this. Their video, their outtakes, their clips, their comments, just to help guys understand it. It’s really important.”