Mark Pope says playing for Rick Pitino at Kentucky helped prepare him for first postseason as coach

Mark Pope has not won a game in the NCAA Tournament across nine seasons at Utah Valley and BYU, earning two bids in 2021 and 2024 with one-and-done exits in both appearances. In conference tournaments, Pope is 8-9 across three different leagues, starting with a 3-4 mark in WAC Tournaments (Utah Valley), 4-4 in WCC Tournaments (BYU) and 1-1 in the Big 12 Tournament (BYU) last season.

That was among the few knocks on him when he emerged as a candidate for the head coaching job at Kentucky. The regular season success was obvious and he won big games throughout the year playing a fun brand of basketball, but could he win when it mattered most? Unfortunately, he won’t be able to answer that question until the ball is tipped in Nashville this week, followed by wherever the journey takes the Wildcats over the next couple of weeks in the Big Dance.

Coaching at his alma mater, though, things are different with a bigger platform and greater opportunity for blue-blood talent — but also the pressure that comes with being at the winningest tradition in college basketball. It was a historic debut regular season at Kentucky, tying the sport’s all-time record for most top-15 wins with eight, a mark that has only been met twice ever. Will it lead to anything of substance this postseason?

Pope says playing for Rick Pitino during the program’s magical run in the 90s helped him prepare for this moment. They are lessons he hopes to pass down to his players, now in his shoes wearing the jersey.

“I’ve told this story a lot, and it does apply. I’ll never forget it, Coach (Pitino) had been here for seven years, I think, when we finally won it. He had been to a Final Four — an epic Final Four. We finally made it to a national championship game and people were getting impatient, as you can imagine. They’re like, ‘it’s time to win one,'” Pope said. “Coach was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and the expectation for our team was from day one that we were going to win it.

“This was the team that was going to come win it. We were No. 1 or No. 2 all year long, so there’s all this build-up and all this emotion. It was such an incredible ride.”

Kentucky defeated UMass in the national semifinals — “a massive game, just a really, really important game,” Pope said — to advance to the championship game vs. Syracuse. All of their work up to that point came down to one 40-minute moment, their dreams of being the team to win it all for the first time since 1978 leading to this.

Pitino’s response was one that has stuck with Pope ever since.

“We’re in the championship game, Coach P’s first-ever national championship game, and certainly for all of us players, our first national championship game,” he said. “Coach is the king of fiery speeches and emotion and drama and intensity. We finished the game, we get up the next morning, and I’m thinking, ‘This is the time. Coach is going to bring out the greatest speech ever. He’s going to get us all riled up.’

“I’ll never forget it, we’re sitting there eating breakfast, and all of a sudden Coach just leans back. He’s like, ‘Oh, we put in the film.’ That was his whole prep speech for the thing.”

No tears, no screams, no grandiose performance. It was just about trusting their body of work and what had gotten them to that point. No reason to get ready if you stay ready, right?

“Coach had this beautiful way of just normalizing the moment. All the prep work had been done every single game leading up to that game, and it became a habit now to treat every game like it was the biggest game that we would ever play,” Pope said. “So on this 36th game of the season and the last game of the season, like the prep work had already been done, and all the emotion had been done and the habits had been learned.”

That brings us to this Kentucky team and its historical season to this point, all of the work they’ve done to get here. The reason every cupcake opponent in the non-conference was treated just like the Champions Classic was for this moment.

The big moment doesn’t feel like the big moment if they’re all big moments. That’s why the messaging was consistent from day one

“Hopefully we’re in a space on our team where we understand that we’re not gonna have to do a lot of hoopla and nonsense, because we understand that every game we play is the biggest game where we’re gonna play,” Pope said. “It normalizes these now, these one-and-done games, lose or you’re out games.

“Hopefully we’re prepared for that I believe that our guys are.”