Mark Pope gives us the plan for his first Kentucky recruit. ‘We’re really good at this.’
There are plenty of question marks regarding the immediate impact that Collin Chandler — the first recruit of the Mark Pope era — will have on Kentucky next season.
Chandler is scheduled to return to the United States from a two-year church mission trip Thursday, and he’s played very little basketball — and zero competitive games — during his time away.
What isn’t in question is Chandler’s work ethic. Ask around about the 6-foot-4 guard from Utah, and you’re going to get some variation of the following:
“He’s in the gym all the time,” Lynn Lloyd, the player’s grassroots coach, told the Herald-Leader. “I mean, that kid — nobody will outwork Collin Chandler. There is no doubt.”
Not so fast, freshman.
“I’m going to have to spend a lot of time kicking Collin Chandler out of the gym,” Pope told the Herald-Leader. “I’m probably going to have somebody stationed here, or restrict his access card to the gym. Everybody’s got 24/7 access. I might restrict his access to the gym. Maybe put a tracking device on him to make sure he’s not in there too much.”
Chandler is due to arrive in Kentucky in a few weeks, and that’s when the delicate process of getting him back up to basketball speed will begin.
This is nothing new for Pope, who spent the past five seasons as BYU’s head coach, the four years before that as Utah Valley’s head coach and the four before that as a BYU assistant. So he has worked with plenty of players who stepped away from the game to serve as Mormon missionaries in the past.
In an interview with the Herald-Leader, Pope laid out the plan for Chandler — as well as his expectations for year one — beginning with the time the 20-year-old freshman arrives on UK’s campus.
Chandler, a top 40 national recruit in the 2022 class, certainly has the talent to be a difference-maker in his first season of college basketball, but how those first several weeks at UK go could be crucial to his ability to make an immediate splash at this level.
Pope’s plan for Collin Chandler
If you plan to follow Chandler’s progress closely over the next few months, you’re likely going to hear Pope use the phrase “RTP” — which means “return to play” — on a regular basis.
“RTP is really, really important,” Pope said. “And we’ve done this a lot. We’re really good at this. We’ll force him to go way slower than he wants to. The first 8-12 weeks are just massively important, because you have to go slow enough that you don’t have a setback. And so, for every young man that stepped away from the game for a little while, this return to play is meticulous.
“You have to keep guys exactly on schedule, monitoring their progress and their self-reporting every single day. And so he’ll go slower early on, but then what’s nice is — depending on where he comes in on day one — you get past that 8-12 week period, and then it’s full speed ahead. So it’s very meticulous for the first two to three months, and after that, you’re kind of on the train and going.”
When Chandler gets to campus, the rules surrounding his basketball participation will be strict.
“Collin Chandler will not be allowed to do any live play — even one-on-one — for at least the first three weeks. At least,” Pope said. “And then — depending on how his progress goes — after 3-4 weeks, we might allow him to start playing some one-on-one from the elbow. So, like, one- or two-dribble one-on-one from the elbow. But he’s not allowed to step on the court at all for five-on-five.”
Pope, who spent three years in medical school at Columbia University before walking away from that life to pursue a career as a basketball coach, put his doctor’s hat back on for a few minutes while further explaining the importance of bringing Chandler back up to speed at a deliberate pace.
“Like I said, we’ve done this a lot. And we don’t need to rush him back,” Pope said. “You know, one of the things you lose when you step away this long is you have a receptor response. You actually have a feedback loop, for example, from your ankles. From all the receptors in your ankle, where they sense you being off balance, sends a receptor response to your brain. And then it goes back to your ankle, where those muscles fire to adjust.
“When you’ve been walking around for two years trying to serve people, it just slows down. And it’s a safety issue. It’s also about conditioning and everything else. But that part is where we’re super cautious, where you kind of retrain your body just a little bit slowly. It’s not like you’re coming from infancy, but there is a reality to the fact that you have these incredibly explosive athletes and then they change their focus away for two years — and then it’s us making sure we proceed cautiously as we move forward.”
Immediate expectations at Kentucky
Not only is Pope well-versed in bringing missionaries back to basketball after years away, but the first hire for his UK coaching staff — longtime assistant Cody Fueger — has done it, too. Fueger served on Pope’s staff for all nine of his seasons as a head coach, and he was director of basketball operations at BYU and Utah State before that.
So, Pope won’t be alone in helping Chandler find his way through what’s coming next.
A prominent recent example of Pope and Fueger working through this process featured Richie Saunders, who also went on a two-year mission trip directly out of high school before joining BYU for the 2022-23 season. Saunders managed to play 15.9 minutes per game as a freshman. He was the No. 315 overall recruit in the 2020 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings.
Lynn Lloyd, the co-director of the Utah Prospects program and Chandler’s coach on the Adidas circuit, brought up Cleveland Cavaliers guard Sam Merrill as a good example of a missionary returning home and making an instant impact. Merrill averaged 9.4 points and 3.2 assists in 26.7 minutes per game as a freshman at Utah State after two years away, emerging as a star the following year and hearing his name called in the NBA draft after his senior season.
Merrill was the No. 424 national recruit in the 2014 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings.
Chandler was much more highly touted than either of those players, finishing the 2022 cycle ranked No. 33 overall by 247Sports and one of the final omissions from that year’s McDonald’s All-American Game.
“I’m not going to name names, but I watched this kid in the summer circuit — before his senior year — and he embarrassed people,” Pope said. “This kid is really special. Like, he embarrassed guys that are playing in the league right now. This kid is really good. And you’ll hear me say this a lot, because these are the type of kids we recruit: as good as he is as a basketball player, he’s a better human being.
“And he’s hungry, too. He has a chance to be really special.”
Playing on the highly competitive Adidas circuit that summer were the likes of Reed Sheppard, Chris Livingston, Keyonte George and Ja’Kobe Walter, among other past and future NBA draft picks.
Chandler averaged 21.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game as a high school senior and showed off a nice 3-point shot during his prep and grassroots career. He committed to BYU two and a half years ago, flipping that pledge to Kentucky a few days after Pope got the UK job. He would have been Pope’s top-rated recruit during his time in Provo, and one of the program’s most highly touted incoming players ever.
Even with his time away from the sport, Chandler’s outlook isn’t changing.
“I expect him to be a great player. And he is a great player,” Pope said. “Listen, here’s the thing. There are guys that you just know — like, every part of basketball tells you what they’re going to become. Everybody takes a different path to get there. So a lot of times, when I’m evaluating a guy and I’m thinking about his ceiling, I’m like, ‘I know where he’s going to go.’ You just don’t know how quickly they’re going to get there. And there are so many things that come into play.
“We all take a little bit of a winding path to get where we go. And that’s the part that’s actually fun. It’s a huge confidence boost to know where you’re going to get to, and then the fun — the exhilaration — comes from the discovery of the path that you’re going to end up taking to get there. And the challenges that you’re going to have to overcome.”
Chandler hasn’t been interviewed about his change of college plans yet. The rules surrounding his mission trip are fairly strict. His communication with Pope is limited to one day per week, when the two are permitted to exchange emails. Lloyd also receives weekly emails from Chandler, and he laughed when asked how his former player felt about Pope’s move to Lexington.
“Well he’s thrilled about Mark’s hiring, or he wouldn’t be going to Kentucky,” Lloyd said. “… And he’ll be a good leader for everything that goes on there, without question.”
In addition to the emails, Pope has been able to follow Chandler’s journey — which began in Sierra Leone and wraps up this week in London — through online posts chronicling the mission. He said reading those only made him more excited for Chandler’s future as one of the first players to help get the next era of Kentucky basketball started.
“One of the best things about our job is we get to kind of shepherd and witness these kids grow, right?” Pope said. “And just become incredible people. He has had some of the most incredible experiences that you could possibly have. …
“It’s really special, man. I mean, who does this? Who just puts their life aside and says, ‘Hey, I’m going to go serve people for two years.’ It’s pretty cool. And I have high expectations for him. We’ll see how soon he can get there.”
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