Mark Pope looking to add 'a last staff spot or two' before wrapping up offseason

Mark Pope‘s five-man assistant pool has been finalized in Lexington, hiring Alvin Brooks III as his associate head coach, Cody Fueger, Jason Hart and Mikhail McLean as assistant coaches and Mark Fox as an associate coach. In terms of support staff additions, Nick Robinson has been named director of basketball operations while Randy Towner is the head strength coach, Brandon Wells the senior athletic trainer. He’s got assistants to the head coach in Megan Summers and Brett Ryback — the latter also the director of player development — and a director of basketball administration in Will Barton. Pope also brought Leander Ridgeway (grad assistant) and Matt Santoro (assistant video coordinator) with him from Provo while Mark Evans (associate director of equipment) is sticking around after ten years in Lexington.

The building may have been empty when he arrived, but Pope has slowly but surely filled it up one piece at a time. And he’s been intentional about all of them, making sure they’re all complementary fits with similar goals.

“That all happened super, super quick — well, relatively fast. I’m pretty slow and methodical and meticulous about adding personnel to the staff,” Pope said Tuesday. “Fitting the pieces together is so important to me, so you readjust your thinking every time you add a new piece. You’ve got to readjust and evaluate and reevaluate.”

What else is in the works?

The core building blocks are in place, but the staff is not yet complete. What else is in the works? Pope’s got his eye on another piece or two before calling it an offseason.

He’s been using the team’s first few weeks on campus as a gauge for what else is needed on the staff, particularly to navigate the dramatic changes the sport has seen in recent months.

“Now we’re at the point with potentially a last staff spot or two about not reevaluating personnel, but reevaluating positions and features of what a job would look like. That actually is taking longer,” Pope said. “I’m really glad that we’ve crossed over the threshold of where I get to see the staff on the court now interacting with the players in terms of teaching and instructing and pushing and communicating. I’m getting to see the staff in a new light the last week and a couple of days.”

Staying ahead of the curve

Could that be a general manager position to help navigate the portal and NIL with a focus on roster building? What about an analytics guru whose job is to stay ahead of the curve as the game changes year by year? He wasn’t specific, but said keeping with the times is crucial for the program’s growth and will be addressed with any potential moves.

“As we take in all that information, all of that is kind of going to filter into the last spot or two about how we reevaluate what that job is even gonna look like,” Pope said. “We’re getting a sense, as we talk about every single day, the landscape of college basketball has changed so dramatically. There’s this real push about, like, ‘Man, if I end up with exactly the same staff that I would have had three years ago, (one) that hasn’t been reactionary to the massive changes in college basketball, then I might miss something.’

“We’re trying to figure all of that out. We already have a couple of positions that are a little bit unique and different and we’re trying to feel out the last few spots.”

Things are going to be different at Kentucky moving forward. We’ll see if that includes any new staff additions in the near future, as Pope predicts.