WTF - Mark F’ing Pope? WTF am I seeing???? (MY INITIAL REACTION 4/11/24)

I said basically said the same thing, but you have some who won't admit they were wrong.

I was shocked when Pope was hired. He was someone I always thought could be a candidate if he took BYU on a run. But he never did.

He won me over in his press conference and then 2024-25 was a breathe of fresh air. I convinced myself a healthy Jaxson Robinson and Lamont Butler could have resulted in a Final 4. But even last year’s team would dig deep first half holes. Like Pope did yesterday, I used injuries as an excuse.

Losing out on Dent, Wilkerson and Lendenborg was concerning, heck Pope even missed on Iowa’s frontcourt player who hit the game winner against Florida last night. But then we signed some decent role players. I thought Lowe’s tape looked solid and I foolishly thought JQ would get healthy and dominate.

We were validated by the Purdue performance. I texted my brother after that beatdown and said, “Final 4 or bust” after a freaking exhibition game. Shrugged the Georgetown beatdown off as “just one of those nights.” But then you had the Michigan State-UNC-Gonzaga debacles and that’s when my eyes were opened.

The Tennessee wins, St. John’s, Arkansas and Vanderbilt games were fun. The winning streak against mediocre opponents was fun. But let’s be real, the UT wins were luck. LSU was pure luck. Santa Clara was luck. When did UK Basketball have to rely on luck to get to the 7-seed line, or win a single game in the tournament?

I hope I can look back on this post in three years as Mark Pope is cutting down the nets and make fun of myself. But man, I just don’t see this working out. There are too many red flags.

BlueWorldOrder74 said:

Went back to check my initial reaction of the Mark Pope announcement. Seems about right.

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Spot on sir.

LineSkiCat14 said:

The odd thing is: He had a fantastic 1st year. COY worthy based on the injuries and talent we had. We still had some odd lapses of mental focus at times.. but it's not like that team had a ton more talent than this year. It was largely transfers that were sort of left out in the cold. It's not like we got 5 of the top10 transfers, I believe it looked a lot like this year's class in ranking.

So maybe because those guys were 5th year seniors mostly, that they sort of didn't need to be coached hard? But Pope still did some miraculous 2nd half coaching to come back in big games. And yeah, last year lost a lot of games, but the SEC was absurdly good. This year's team playing LAST year's schedule goes like 2-16.

So it's all very odd. I don't think hes' right for the job at this moment. He's got an awful lot to prove, and it can't just be wins anymore.. I need to see that he can coach defense, stop the slow starts, and get tough on his guys. But I also wonder what we can do with a better AD, having a GM, not having weird JMI issues, and some changes to his staff. I guess we will see one way or another next year.

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I think last year the players fully bought in, they fit exactly what Pope wanted to do, none of them had their own selfish egos, and I think Pope was still riding his dream job high. If you go back and look at some of the journey videos put out last year it is not the same guy. He even looks different. I think the pressure of the job just broke him this year. It's a lot easier when the expectations are super low year one. He genuinely had nothing to lose. Everyone expected a contender this year. He was expected to basically build a super team with the money he was given. When he whiffed on Dent, Yaxel, Lamar, Caleb Wilson, Silas Demary, Nate Ament (who else am I missing) the pressure mounted and he had to just sign whoever. Most people thought we had a good roster going into the season though. To be fair if he simply got Lamar (assuming Lowe stayed healthy) I actually believe we would have been pretty good. Probably would have been a four or five seed at worst which isn't what we expected, but far better than this. Then the season starts and we get killed by Louisville. You could see the panic on his face walking into MSG before MSU. He knew he messed up big time and the pressure just kept building from there. I think he's broken beyond repair. Funny enough when I saw who he got for year one I even told some people at work "year two will probably be a down year" because I knew we had a lot of good players out of eligibility and he had to get younger players to develop unless he just wanted to keep putting teams together from the portal every year. He screwed up, by all accounts, letting the $22 million number leak and calling this team a Ferrari. We'll see though. Maybe this year humbled him to a point where it changes who he is as a person and his coaching philosophy. He better hope.