Mark Pope ready for 'epic adventure' against Gonzaga and old friend Mark Few

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Mark Pope and Mark Few will do whatever they can to make sure they beat the other on Saturday, but before and after, it’ll be all smiles between the two friends.

Pope’s No. 4 Kentucky team heads to Seattle this weekend for a Top 10 showdown with Few’s No. 7 Gonzaga crew. The two have been buddies and competitors for a while now, dating back to Pope’s days as an assistant coach over a decade ago.

While serving as the head coach at BYU, Pope faced Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference nine different times. As you might have guessed of the juggernaut that has been Gonzaga over the last two decades under Few, the Bulldogs won eight of those matchups. Pope’s lone win was a 91-78 upset of a Gonzaga team ranked that was ranked No. 2 back in Feb. 2020.

But Pope’s first major memory of Few goes back before his time with the Cougars, to when he was the head coach at Utah Valley State. Gonzaga won a blowout, 92-69, in Nov. 2016, but it was what Few did for him postgame that still sticks out to Pope over eight years later.

“I’ve got to know Coach (Few) pretty well. He’s been a great friend. He’s one of the best people in the business. He’s just a special person,” Pope said on Thursday. “I’ll never forget my first head coaching job at Utah Valley (State). We did a buy game at Gonzaga, and I had known Coach as an assistant. So we went up there to play and were kind of in the game, and then it got away from us, like you would expect it would at the end.”

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“You’re just early in your coaching career and so you’re trying to collect yourself in the locker room after the media and after everything and I finally walked out of the locker room, and Coach Few — there’s nobody left in the building — and Coach Few was just waiting out there to talk. And that’s just who he is, man, he’s just really special. And what he’s done in basketball has just been almost unfathomable. And I love him.”

Pope will have to put that love aside for a couple of hours on Saturday though. As is usually the case under Few, Gonzaga is one of the best teams in the country. He’ll have an idea of what to expect out of the Bulldogs, but that won’t make pulling off a victory any easier for Kentucky.

“He puts together incredible teams, incredible product. Every single year. He’s so good,” Pope continued. “He’s got a really distinctive style. They know exactly who they are. You could almost take the names off the jerseys, and you would know if you’re watching a Gonzaga team by the way they play. They win. So it’s going to be an epic adventure.”