This offseason was a wild one across college basketball, as numerous high-major coaches changed their plans for the 2024-25 season.
The Kentucky Wildcats were at the center of the biggest move that saw John Calipari leave for Arkansas. Then, after courting Dan Hurley and Scott Drew, the Cats landed Mark Pope to lead the program into the new era of Kentucky Basketball.
It started off with a bang as the BBN packed out Rupp Arena for his introductory press conference, but now things are in a holding pattern as the fanbase waits to see the team take the floor. He also got some positive reviews from some of his peers.
In this year’s edition of Candid Coaches by CBS, Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander talk with coaches around the country and get their opinions on different topics all in exchange for anonymity. This week they released a poll and some quotes regarding the following question; Who was the best high-major coaching hire of 2024?
Pope landed in third landing 8.5% of the vote trailing Calipari (43.4%) and Dusty May (21.7%).
They also have a few coaches to give quotes on the Pope hire.
“He’s not a guy that’s looking for a microphone every 10 minutes to state his case. He doesn’t make a lot of excuses. Basketball is what drives him,” says one coach. “Underrated recruiter, very good talent evaluator and knows how to stay ahead of the curve offensively and be impossible to guard in space. Uses his personnel like a surgeon. Everyone on the floor is really good at something, and they’ll buy into that role.”
That followed with this one;
“I know this isn’t the guy Kentucky fans thought they were going to replace Cal with — but he’s already won them over. He’ll be super there. And he really is a brilliant offensive coach. So not only will he be good there, but they’ll be fun to watch. He might not dominate the recruiting rankings like Cal did because lots of schools are using NIL. But he’ll get good players and win big.”
Let’s hope that the last sentence from that coach comes true.
The rankings seem about right, as you have a Hall-of-Fame coach leading the way and a coach that made a Cinderella run to the Final Four, taking second place. There are still a lot of question marks, but coaches around the country seem to believe Pope is going to be successful.
