Mark Pope might not be the coach Kentucky fans wanted, but he might be the coach UK needs

Listen up BBN: Give Mark Pope a chance.

He’s not Scott Drew or Danny Hurley — and personally I would have waited for an answer from Billy Donovan — but there are reasons to believe that the 51-year-old former Kentucky forward and current Brigham Young basketball coach can be a success as the expected successor to John Calipari.

First and foremost, he’s smart. Like really smart. The member of Rick Pitino’s 1996 national title team dropped out of Columbia Medical School to go into coaching. You have to be smart to even get into Columbia Medical School in the first place, although Mark often jokes that plenty of people questioned his brain power when he left New York to take a low-paying staff job under Mark Fox at Georgia.

He’s personable. Pope will talk to anyone, anywhere about practically anything. There are stories about Pope riding his bike all over Seattle when he played basketball at Washington before transferring to Kentucky. In 2015, I talked to Mark after he got his first head coaching job at Utah Valley. Before I knew it, we had spent nearly a half hour on the phone talking about how excited he was about the challenge and what was going on in his life at the time.

(Remember this: Pope brought his third Utah Valley team to Rupp Arena on Nov. 10, 2017, and led Kentucky 34-25 at the half before losing 73-63.)

He’s hungry. Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and John Calipari had never won a national championship before becoming the basketball coach at Kentucky. No doubt Pope would love to join that elite list. And he’ll work toward doing it.

He has done a good job at BYU. After going 77-56 in four seasons at Utah Valley, he became the head coach at Brigham Young, where he had previously served as an assistant to Dave Rose. In five seasons coaching the Cougars, Pope is 110-52 with a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances, including this season when BYU finished 23-11 overall and 10-8 in its first season in the Big 12. It beat then 11th-ranked Baylor in Provo and then No. 7-ranked Kansas in Lawrence.

It is true Pope hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game. His first BYU team went 24-8, but COVID canceled March Madness. As a No. 6 seed, his 2020-21 team lost to UCLA 73-62 in the first round. (UCLA reached the Final Four.) As a No. 6 seed, this year’s Cougars were upset by No. 11 seed Duquesne 71-67 in the first round.

But it is also true that Pope’s teams have played a modern, entertaining style of basketball in the same vein Pope played for Pitino as a Wildcat. This season, BYU was 22nd nationally in scoring offense at 81.4 points per game and second in the nation in three-point shooting attempts at 32 per game. Ken Pomeroy ranked BYU 14th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency.

It’s also true that when you make a coaching change, you want a personality change, as well. You don’t want Coach Cal’s replacement to be Coach Cal. And that’s not a knock on John Calipari. Time for a change. Time for something different. And Mark Pope is not John Calipari.

And Kentucky basketball is not BYU basketball, of course. We know that. He knows that. Pope was a part of all that is Kentucky basketball for two seasons, after all. The guess here is that he can handle what comes with the job by (a) winning over what is sure to be a skeptical fan base with his enthusiastic, upbeat personality and (b) by, well, winning. Of course.

This isn’t to say the hire is without risk. If the deal is finalized, Mitch Barnhart is sticking his neck out. He didn’t land Drew. He didn’t land Hurley. There are reports the UK athletics director did not aggressively pursue Donovan. And there may have been other coaches with impressive resumes Barnhart could have tried to coax into taking the job.

If Mark Pope fails, Barnhart will be remembered more for the men’s basketball hires that didn’t work out rather than the one that did.

The guess here is that Mark Pope will make this hire work.

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