I’d love to see him end up succeeding somewhere. I feel absolutely awful for him that it hasn’t gone the way he and we would’ve all wanted. I can’t imagine the feelings he is having about this whole situation, it must be a nightmare.
Question for those who are against Pope
- Thread starter MY_POPE
- Start date
Yep and if you put any one of those dudes on the 96 team in place of Pope they would not be as a good as Pope was. While Pope was no superstar compared to those 3 he was Michael Jordan. Fans like you need to eat ****.
But Mitch hired an unqualified guy. If Pope hadn’t played here he wouldn’t have even been in the conversation.
Not debating that. He wasn’t the piece he was made out to be when hired though. Huge revisionist history. His captaincy was played up. The PR machine took over and the sheep followed.
I kinda agree with this. I don’t want to fire him blindly and end up hiring John Pelphry or something.
If this season spent go well, work the back channels on the DL see who would take the job. Then make the call later.
Like most, I love Pope the person. I would love nothing more than to see hum prove me and all the other skeptics wrong.
But, I HATE Mitch for putting us and Coach Pope in this postion!
Not this season.
I'm talking about Mitch hiring a beloved former player for a job he was absolutely not ready for.
That was completely unfair to both Coach Pope and the fan base.
I never thought he should have been hired for the UK job, but he was, and it was his dream job. The guy loves UK and was a contributing part of the 96 team averaging 7 points 5 rebounds for the season, while not superstar stats he played his role. I truly believe he thought he could win big here when he took the job. There is no reason to trash the guy. You can want him replaced that is fine, but to talk shat about him is uncalled for.
People act like we can’t get a coach other than freaking Pope. Why we pretending that either Lucas or Shertz wouldn’t take this job in an instant? And who knows, there’s probably some established coach out there tired of their AD or boosters willing to take a better job. It’s Batt’s job to find those guys, something Mitch refused to do in favor of the easiest freaking solution.
You can’t look at what Stein is doing with a fraction of the budget against much higher budgeted teams and think “yeah, this Poe guy is doing wonderfully!”
Even looking at his first season, how many blowouts did we have? How many times has Stein been blown out? Once? And we were in that Alabama game for 75% game while Pope has struggles in dozens of games, going down by double digits.
What’s going on with the basketball team isn’t normal if Pope is supposedly a “Stein-caliber” coach.
This is literally Stein’s first job. He’s not even yet while Pope is in his 12th season. How can you look at what’s going on and think anything positively about the basketball program right now?
Pitino was 13-14 in his 3rd season at Boston University, so he was obviously not ready either. I'd better hold off on getting lotto numbers from you.
People on here were afraid we’d never replace Stoops. How’s that working out. We can replace Pope, lol
I'll go ahead and put you on ignore. This opinion is so stupid I'm going spare myself hearing anything else you have to say. The player you claim to be the worst you have ever seen was Pac10 freshman of the year and played 6 or 7 seasons in the NBA. Did you ever see Obrzut, Shagari, Jared Carter, Jonathan Davis, etc. ?
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As i've said before a school like Utah is his ceiling. Thats fine, but let us not fall into mediocrity over any coach. We are the gold standard.
I'm definitely calling bull if you are in any insinuating there was a good chance Hurley ends up here if Mitch had just tried harder.
Honestly? I’d be pretty damn pissed if he went somewhere else and succeeded after all the whiffing and bs that’s happened here. I don’t really feel I have anything to worry about though. He might have an occasional decent year like he did year 1 here but he will never win a title and I’d even be surprised if he ever made a final four.
If facts are shat talking, so be it. The “one of us” and “Captain of the 96 squad” and that whole schtick was just overblown. The fanbase was desperate for anti-Cal and Mitch set the PR wheels in motion. And the majority of BBN slurped it up. It frustrates the hell out of me what has happened. Not just the poor performance, but the division the PR campaign indirectly caused.
Here’s a question. If he’s one of us and dream job and sacred cloth and whatever other word garble spews out…You think he’s still connected to UK once he’s gone? Hell no he won’t be. He will slide right back out to Utah or wherever. That’s home to him. But Mitch needed a sales pitch and he got a huge portion of the fanbase to buy it because they’re just fans and desperate. That part pisses me off more than anything.
This isn’t Popes third season. There is a big huge world outside of UK. You should check it out sometime.
I don’t believe that at all. If he loses the fan base trickling in wins isn’t going to save him under the new AD.
I have plenty of bitterness for both. Mitch absolutely deserves more for being a massive failure of an AD and being the dumbass that put us in this position. Not only by giving Cal the lifetime deal but then making it even worse by making a horrible hire that everyone knew was stupid the moment it happened. I have pure hatred in my heart for Barnhart. It’d take everything in my soul not to ***** slap him if I ever saw him in person.
I don’t hate Pope and if he’s fired after this year i probably won’t even have any bad feelings towards him at all. While I don’t like that we will have wasted 3 years on him, it will have only been 3 years and I can move pretty quick. Though if he does just enough to keep himself here the remaining 4 years of his deal then he will enter into Cal/Mitch territory for me.
That initial introduction festivity is certainly why many people still have any faith or hope in Pope. That introduction had so much hoopla that it stuck in people's minds. I'm not a Pope basher. I actually think the man can coach Xs and Os, but I don't have any faith left that he can reliably put together a cohesive, talented roster and UKs war chest isn't helping at this point. Loved his first year despite some head scratchers. Unfortunately, I think he just somehow caught lightening in a bottle with Butler, Amari, and Brea. I almost think having to scramble to assemble that roster helped luck him into a unique unit.
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Makes perfect sense to me. How much more evidence do you need that he’s not good enough to coach here? Unless he’s gonna win #9 this year, he’s not, then I’d much rather go ahead and lose 15 games so we can fire him and move on to a legit coach.
Just like with Cal, all we are doing with Pope is wasting years/seasons and letting all our rivals catch us in wins and titles. We are going to drop to third in alltime wins soon if he remains here and could easily drop to third in titles in a few years as well.
Kentucky fans are smart. They can’t look at what Stein is doing with a fraction of Pope’s budget (compared to what other schools in their respective sports) and think “Why is Pope struggling when Stein is beating teams with twice his budget?”
Stein is going to be on everyone’s mind going into the last few weeks of the basketball season if Pope doesn’t vastly over-perform. The fans won’t ignore it. The media won’t ignore that (You know Matt Jones won’t ignore it). Batt cannot ignore it.
Fans aren't stupid. We know Mitch was the problem. But honestly what do you care who likes or doesn't like Pope? J Batt or any athletic director doesn't consult the fans when they make decisions.
You're wrong about that. Most people here want him to succeed. Unfortunately many of us can see that he doesn't possess the skillset to succeed.
There it is, the schtick of the Popesters - demanding that fans somehow conjure up a replacement. As if we have anything to do with firing and hiring. LOL
Ignore him, he's a goalpost moving troll. No matter what you say he'll twist it into a straw man and challenge your fanhood.
The king of the cherry picker society is back
Your gaslighting is insufferable. You're actively propagandizing, trying to convince people that making the tournament is "not bad." Take your mediocrity and shove it up your kiester.
If you're satisfied with a tournament appearance and an early exit, bully for you. But you have no business shaming other fans for being dissatisfied with those kinds of results. Literally eff off.
They’re acting like an abusive girlfriend. “You can’t do better than me!”There it is, the schtick of the Popesters - demanding that fans somehow conjure up a replacement. As if we have anything to do with firing and hiring. LOL
There are so many better coaches in the mid-majors who would do better than what we have. But according to these people, we can’t even hire a coach from freaking Miami of all schools. Like they give a f*** about basketball.
It's a fallback position of last resort because they know Pope is indefensible. They try to massage his stats and shame fans for being concerned. Last thing they do is put the burden on you to name a replacement so they can recycle their arguments and compare stats and pick you apart. It's a fool's errand. They are a handful of propagandists, likely staffers or just idiots with no life.
Facts are saying he is not the man for the job, but we have UK fans calling him goofy, dopey, making fun of his religion, and everything else you can imagine. Of course I shouldn't be surprised we have a large segment of fans that have no life and UK sports is the only thing they have going for them. These same fans that are slurping all over Steins nuts right now would turn on him in a split second if he lost the rest of the games this season or only won 6 games next year.
No one wants him to fail, we just see that he’s going to and we’re tired of mediocre basketball. We all enjoyed that first season because we thought the flaws were a result of having to put together a team quickly, turns out that’s just how a pope team is which is why most didn’t want him hired to begin with.
There it is, the schtick of the Popesters - demanding that fans somehow conjure up a replacement. As if we have anything to do with firing and hiring. LOL
Wait a minute, that’s exactly what all the Pope bashing is. You want him gone. Fired.
You can’t say “Pope out…” then turn around and say “whoa whoa whoa I’m not in charge of hiring…”
So it is a fair question to ask, who replaces him?
More importantly how much time does the next guy get?
Wrong, you don't get to do that. You're just trying to distract from the issue at hand, which is, we look questionable against a weak team in an exhibition. All of us had hopes that Pope would turn this around, but the evidence continues to stack like bricks in a wall.
It is a FACT that fans are not in charge of hiring and firing. Otherwise we would have had Calipari or Donovan right after Tubby. Or before. What chaps your arse is that we have free rein to complain all we want. You want us silenced. That's not going to happen. Demanding that we supply a list of coaches is just a form of moving the goalposts which is a logical fallacy. When you manage to summon sufficient brain cells to construct a logical argument, get back to me.
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