The art of not "missing it": Mark Pope wants players who embrace the Kentucky experience

Recruiting has become even more complex in the transfer portal era. After taking the job last year, Mark Pope put together an impressive squad in a matter of weeks. Now, with more time and an even more impressive NIL budget, Pope has assembled one of the deepest teams in recent Kentucky Basketball history, with ten total newcomers joining four core returners from the team that went to the Sweet 16 in March.

Obviously, talent is high atop Pope’s list of criteria, but equally as important is fit. During his conversation with Matt Jones on Kentucky Sports Radio, Pope talked about how he strives to find guys who will appreciate the unique culture of Kentucky Basketball, an essential first step in recruiting.

“That happens,” Pope said when Jones asked if there have been times when he’s met with a player and known immediately that it probably won’t work out. “This is a special, special place. So it happens, more often than not, that we’re a little bit in and we’re, like, ‘Ah, you know, I might love his talent but like, oh, he’s not going to survive here.’ Or I might love him as a kid, but his agenda is just different than our agenda. And so that process is really important.”

Pope used Andrija Jelavic as an example. The Croatian big man is still playing for KK Mega Superbet in Serbia and yet to visit Kentucky, but Pope could tell even on FaceTime that he was Kentucky material.

“That was one of the really important parts of the process with Andrija [Jelavic], because I liked him, but you never know. Like, we’ll see how some of the skillset translates, some of the physicality translates, some of those things translate.

“But, as we were exploring all those things, which I was so excited about, all those pieces when I started talking about on the phone, and it was one particular conversation on FaceTime where I’m talking to him, and you could see him get emotional as he started talking about the possibility of playing at the University of Kentucky. And I’m like, that’s it. This is our guy, right? Because he’s not going to miss it.”

“It” is Pope’s way of describing the breadth of the Kentucky Basketball experience. His first team definitely didn’t “miss it,” saying on multiple occasions how lucky they felt to be at Kentucky and how much they loved the experience. The feeling was mutual, which will give last year’s squad a special place in program history.

“Yeah, our guys could, for sure [feel the love from the fans]. And I think is as much as I was happy about that, I was happy that our guys didn’t miss it. Because the craziest thing is like — and this is almost incomprehensible to me — you could actually come here for a year as a player and miss it. Like, you could miss the whole thing.

“We talk to our recruits about this all the time. If you came here and you were just only dialed into yourself, you could actually miss the great uniqueness and the monstrosity that this experience can be. You could actually miss the whole thing.”

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Pope believes his second team won’t miss it either, telling a story about meeting up with Mo Dioubate’s mother in the Bronx earlier this week. Dioubate wasn’t there, but even just in talking with his mother, Pope knows that the Alabama transfer is ready to embrace everything that comes with being a Kentucky Wildcat.

“Spending some time with Mo’s family, they get it too. It’s not just the guys who were coming from a mid-major. I mean, he’s coming from a really good program, but it’s already so ingrained in him how different this is at Kentucky than anywhere else.

“And he’s going to come here with — he’s a beautiful man. He’s a beautiful human being — but he’s going to come here and he’s not going to miss it either. Like, he’s going to take it all in, too, and so I think we have the makings of another group. Hopefully, it’s a staple for us forever, of guys who really understand what this is.”

Height, length, athleticism, physicality, and shooting are all important traits; however, Pope knows better than anyone what it really takes to succeed at Kentucky. And he’s determined to find the guys who have it.

“As the head coach here, running this program, I cannot bring guys in here that are going to miss this. It would feel like I’m disrespecting this place that I love so much, and sometimes like uber-talented guys could come here and miss this, but I think the guys are going to serve us well as a community and a Commonwealth and this incredible flagship program of all of college basketball, are the guys that have come here and not miss it, and those guys could actually hang banners for us.”