Radical changes needed for UK's Basketball Program

meteordealer

All-Conference
Nov 20, 2004
11,755
2,697
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Cal won multiple conference championships. An actual championship and final fours. Thats not moral victories.
He's also been a head coach for almost 40 years. I would hope he's won something at this point. He surely didn't win anything his last 5 or so years at UK.
 

meteordealer

All-Conference
Nov 20, 2004
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Pope has been a head coach for almost 15 years. He has 0 championships of any kind. No NCAA or conference tourney, or even regular season titles.
Cool story. Lets go back and hang some banners in Rupp for all of Cal's #1 recruiting classes, and preseason #1 ranking in the polls. Since that's so important. That was the entire point of this thread. PRESEASON RANKINGS.
 

RunninRichie

Heisman
Sep 5, 2019
29,572
71,272
113
Cool story. Lets go back and hang some banners in Rupp for all of Cal's #1 recruiting classes, and preseason #1 ranking in the polls. Since that's so important. That was the entire point of this thread. PRESEASON RANKINGS.
It's a little different. With Calipari you could always expect a solid 20-25 wins. Because he had a sample size, that showed that. His last season here, he would have those type of regular seasons, but flame out in the tourney. When it started becoming a pattern, of losing early in the NCAAT and SECT, he bailed. With Pope, we can infer, it's most likely going to be another 11 or 12 loss season, with no SEC or NCAA hardware. His career here, at BYU, and Utah Valley, shows that.

People, Mark Pope is not a young, unproven, head coach. Every great coach has had success somewhere. Hurley was elite as a HS coach, Calipari made final fours at doormats, Coach K got Army to the NIT, Knight took Army to the NIT 4 times. Pope couldn't get BYU any conference titles. Never made the NCAAT as even a 15-16 seed at Utah Valley.
 
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Jun 30, 2025
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His last 5 seasons at UK, Cal averaged 12 losses, and had a total of 1 NCAA tournament win.
Cal was running on early 2010's momentum. It finally petered out in the 2020's. He exploited a market inefficiency, perception of freshman ability, but then everybody caught up and Duke got even better at it than him. I also believe Cal lost a bit of coaching edge. He just couldn't get his teams to defend like they did in the early 2010's anymore.
 
Jun 30, 2025
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It's a little different. With Calipari you could always expect a solid 20-25 wins. Because he had a sample size, that showed that. His last season here, he would have those type of regular seasons, but flame out in the tourney. When it started becoming a pattern, of losing early in the NCAAT and SECT, he bailed. With Pope, we can infer, it's most likely going to be another 11 or 12 loss season, with no SEC or NCAA hardware. His career here, at BYU, and Utah Valley, shows that.

People, Mark Pope is not a young, unproven, head coach. Every great coach has had success somewhere. Hurley was elite as a HS coach, Calipari made final fours at doormats, Coach K got Army to the NIT, Knight took Army to the NIT 4 times. Pope couldn't get BYU any conference titles. Never made the NCAAT as even a 15-16 seed at Utah Valley.
Your sentiment is understood, but Pope did make the tournament in 2 out of the 4 opportunities he had a BYU. There was no tournament in 2020, which ironically, was probably his best team at BYU. In the mythical 2020 tournament, we might have been destined to play against them in a 4/5 seed matchup.
 

seccats04

Heisman
Dec 6, 2004
14,740
24,156
113
If the AD didn't hire stein then who did? Do tell.
Club Blue made this happen, led by Jacob Tamme.

And Mitch did not want to retire, he was ‘encouraged’ to, if that’s the word you want to use. His hiring privileges were taken away as it was obvious to anyone paying attention that we were behind the times in both major sports and it was time for a change.
 
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The Nightman2

All-Conference
Nov 30, 2019
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Club Blue made this happen, led by Jacob Tamme.

And Mitch did not want to retire, he was ‘encouraged’ to, if that’s the word you want to use. His hiring privileges were taken away as it was obvious to anyone paying attention that we were behind the times in both major sports and it was time for a change.
When was this ?
 

seccats04

Heisman
Dec 6, 2004
14,740
24,156
113
When was this ?
Don’t you remember Mitch saying he was taking a committee approach versus just him being involved? That was not his doing. The BOT knew it was time for a change at AD and they were not gonna let Mitch botch another hire with an insane contract to handcuff the school anymore.
 

Catastic5

Senior
Sep 12, 2026
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unfortunately for pope.....comparing his performance to cal's final years is fundamentally irrelevant since that is not how we measure any kind of success at this program.
And yet people desperately try to force the rest of us into accepting the results because they’re “better than Cal!”
 

BannersWereHung

Redshirt
Oct 13, 2026
1
0
0
Cool story. Lets go back and hang some banners in Rupp for all of Cal's #1 recruiting classes, and preseason #1 ranking in the polls. Since that's so important. That was the entire point of this thread. PRESEASON RANKINGS.
Five banners from Cal. Thats plural. Banners

59.jpg
 
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