Rick Pitino congratulates Mark Pope on Kentucky's win over Duke
All of college basketball is weighing in on No. 19 Kentucky’s 77-72 comeback win over No. 6 Duke, but for Mark Pope, one person’s opinion matters more than most. Rick Pitino just tweeted his congratulations to Pope, the captain of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team. Pitino, whose endorsement of Pope helped Big Blue Nation get on board with the hire in April, kept it short and sweet.
“Congrats Cat. No surprise to me,” he tweeted, adding a flex emoji at the end.
It’s a game day for Pitino, whose St. John’s Red Storm are 2-0 and ranked No. 22 in the AP Poll, three spots behind the Wildcats (for now). They host Wagner tonight, but Pitino couldn’t help but take a second to share his excitement for Pope. It was just one month ago that Pitino joined Pope and a group of former players on the floor at Big Blue Madness, a stunning moment for the former coach and the Kentucky fanbase, who have shared a roller-coaster relationship over the last three decades. The standing ovation from the crowd brought tears to Pitino’s eyes.
“I came within inches of crying my eyes out,” Pitino told Matt Jones on the KSR Pregame Show. “It was really very emotional for me because I was backstage in the back with all my players, and that was great to see them, even Todd Svoboda, who’s gone through a very difficult time and then seeing all the guys. It was very, very emotional for me. And then walking out became more emotional.”
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As Mark Pope scrolls through his phone this morning, you know this tweet (and I’m sure an accompanying text) from Pitino will bring a big smile to his face.
“In terms of who I am, it’s a whole lot of Coach Pitino, right?” Pope told KSR last month. “I say all the time that he changed my DNA as a human being. He changed how I walk into a room, he changed how I think about the world. He changed all of those things. What’s interesting is here I am, finding myself in a different way.”
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