Mark Pope says Kentucky job is 'incredibly humbling' with 'beautiful pressure' ahead of Sweet 16

How do you explain Big Blue Nation to potential recruits and transfer portal targets? Mark Pope did his best to do just that on The Jim Rome Show this week ahead of Kentucky‘s trip to Indianapolis for the Sweet 16.

In short, it ain’t easy.

“Oh, I don’t know, because there’s nothing — there’s no frame of reference,” he said. “You can’t point to something else that people have experienced and be like, ‘you know how that was?’ This is like nothing else, this community — this basketball community. It’s like nothing else. I could tell you story after story.”

All you can do is share experiences from Lexington with the most passionate fanbase in college basketball and use those as examples, essentially a constant cycle of BBN one-upping itself over and over again. Selling out an introductory press conference is probably something that will never be topped, but that’s one of thousands of times BBN has separated itself as second-to-none.

A personal example Pope likes to share from this season? It came from a fan in one of the famous postgame radio crowds, thousands staying after the game to listen to the Kentucky head coach talk while getting pictures and autographs.

“We were doing that one night three or four of weeks ago, right before the end of season,” Pope told Rome. “And afterwards, we get a chance to meet with all 4,000 of those people this day, and sign autographs. I was kind of going through the line and a gentleman probably my age — maybe 45, 50, 55? — was like, ‘Hey, Coach, could I step onto the court?’ He was one step off of the court, and I was like, ‘Yeah, come on up here.’ And so he took one step, he turned around and looked at me, he started crying. Like, he started crying, tears coming down his face. He was like, ‘This is one of the greatest moments of my life.’

“That’s not a unique situation, that’s because of the connection point that Kentucky basketball is. That story happens over and over, every single day. I could tell you 100 other stories just like that if we had the time.”

With great power comes great responsibility, right? That’s how Pope feels leading this program, now more than ever with Kentucky set to take on Tennessee in the Sweet 16 on Friday.

He knows how important this is to Big Blue Nation, how important his role is in all of this. It’s humbling and pressure-filled, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“All of it, it’s incredibly humbling, right? Everything about this job is incredibly humbling, and it comes with beautiful pressure,” Pope said. “You go to work every day to provide for your family. That’s a lot of pressure, but it means something. You put your whole heart and soul into it because you’re doing it for family. That’s how it feels here, this is — our family is really big. Our family is massive.

“It comes with all of the things, the highest volume level. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Pope has his head in the right place going into the biggest week of his life.