LEXINGTON, Ky. — Still less than two weeks removed from a Rupp Arena coronation that caught the attention of the entire college basketball world, Mark Pope has been a busy man.
Meeting with recruits and their families. Showing potential transfers around Keeneland. Spreading the gospel of Kentucky basketball on national TV shows. Driving to and from Blue Grass Airport. Making phone calls.
Oh, so many phone calls.
That’s been a typical day in the life of UK’s new coach since he arrived in town two weekends ago. When Pope stepped onto the podium in Rupp Arena on April 14 — two days after he was officially announced as the next leader of the Wildcats — a frenzied crowd hung on every word.
Pope hit all the right notes, and he closed his remarks that day by saying that he’d be hitting the phones that night. After all, when he stepped off the stage that Sunday afternoon, he had exactly zero players fully committed to his first Kentucky roster.
It was time to get to work.
Pope took some time out of his hectic schedule Tuesday to speak with the Herald-Leader about his efforts to put together a formidable team for the 2024-25 season and lay the foundation for the type of program he wants to lead into the next era of UK basketball.
He said in those closing comments at the ceremony in Rupp that potential recruits had been reacting differently to his initial calls as Kentucky’s coach — after spending the past nine seasons as head coach at Utah Valley and then BYU — and he was looking forward to the conversations in the coming days and weeks as he pieced together his first roster.
That wonder hasn’t worn off.
“It’s actually fun,” Pope said of the seemingly endless series of calls. “Listen, every time I get to say, ‘Hey, this is Coach Pope from the University of Kentucky’ — it’s thrilling for me. And, I think, for a lot of the kids that we talk to, it’s thrilling for them also. You think of Kentucky — especially in the recruiting game — you think of it as the pinnacle of basketball, right?”
Pope couldn’t give an exact number — hesitating to even throw out a ballpark figure — on how many players he had personally spoken to over the past week and a half.
“We’re hitting the phones hard,” he said with a chuckle.
Pope said there have been “a ton” of first calls, and — while he didn’t come out and explicitly say it — the new UK coach made clear that just because a transfer or high school recruit has been contacted doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a serious target for the Wildcats.
“It’s the second and third and fourth calls that actually make a difference,” he said.
And that’s the situation Pope and his still-growing coaching staff find themselves in as they wade through the transfer portal and the leftovers of the 2024 high school class, building a roster from scratch from the remnants of what John Calipari left behind on his way to Arkansas.
Mark Pope’s first recruits
By Monday night, Pope’s 2024-25 roster had grown from nothing to three players in less than a week.
Former BYU commitment Collin Chandler — a top-40 national recruit — officially became the first player of the Pope era when he flipped his pledge to the Cats last Tuesday.
On Sunday, former Drexel big man Amari Williams — the three-time Coastal Athletic Association defensive player of the year — became the first transfer of Pope’s tenure. The next day, Kentucky Mr. Basketball Travis Perry, who signed with Calipari back in November, said he was all in on his UK commitment after meeting with Pope.
BYU guard Richie Saunders could also be announcing soon that he plans to move to Lexington after playing the last two seasons under Pope in Provo.
That’s a start, but those players would fill fewer than a third of UK’s available scholarships, with all 10 underclassmen from Calipari’s final Kentucky team now either in the NBA draft pool or the transfer portal.
The process of finding players will continue with Pope and his assistant coaches — for now, it’s only Cody Fueger and Jason Hart — working the phones and getting to know potential Wildcats on a more personal level. UK hosted Saunders for his official visit Monday, and more official visitors will be coming to Lexington as this week continues.
If a player makes it to town, it’s a pretty good bet he’s a coveted target, with Pope doing his due diligence ahead of time to identify who best fits the direction he wants to take this program.
The 51-year-old coach described himself as “a FaceTime guy” when initially connecting with recruits. He wants to be able to see their faces and get a better sense of their reactions and emotions when discussing the possibility of playing for Kentucky, much preferring that visual medium to traditional phone calls. “When I just have to talk over a regular phone call, I feel like I’m not even communicating,” he said. “I feel like we don’t even know each other.”
What exactly is he looking for during these conversations, before bringing a player to campus?
“It’s all the things,” Pope says, acknowledging that’s a broad answer but asking to bear with him as he works his way toward the specifics. “I think sometimes we try to reduce the recipe down to one or two things. And there’s not very many things you can make with only one or two ingredients. You can make ice with water. But we’re trying to make a much more complicated stew than that.
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