I can already see the future people like you will always have an excuse. If Pope happens to make a run in the tourney and gets a FF, you will still want him fired. You will say that the only reason it happened was because of injuries and that forced Pope to change, you will say he got lucky, you will say that his 3rd year will be back to the same, you will say Pope can't coach and the FF doesn't change that and it was all luck.
Nate Oats?
- Thread starter HappyBlue
- Start date
If pope ends up getting a third year and he turns it around I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong and I’ll be happy about it. I just don’t see it happening, and I don’t see a point in wasting another year
Not at all. I don’t hate pope, I just think he’s a mediocre coach. If pope wasn’t an alumni would you be as behind him as you are?
You are so full of **** that it is coming out your ears, if UK hired a coach pre nil that had back to back losing seasons, you would be calling for his firing during the second season. No way in hell you would be patient enough to wait until the 4th year. No way. The issue is you hated the Pope hire from day one and nothing will change your mind. I bet even if he went on an amazing run and won the title you would be on here making excuses as to why none of it was because of Pope.
Believe what you want. No reason to get mad because I think pope isn’t the right guy.
Yes I would. I think giving 3 years is not asking too much. Now if Pope had a bad first year, miss the tourney or barely get in and get knocked out in the 1st round, then come back the 2nd year with this, I would be right beside you saying he has to go.
i wish he'd go one one of these amazing runs. it'd be the first time in his decade plus career
no it really is the simplest concept ever: winning cures everything.
i don't believe Mark Pope is the guy. many people share that feeling. there's a very simple way to change that: string some wins together. People won't be calling for his job or booing him at Rupp if he's in the midst of a winning streak. So go do it.
Prove me wrong.
Take 3 of the next 4. That should be doable. the schedule isn't getting any easier going forward.
i don't believe Mark Pope is the guy. many people share that feeling. there's a very simple way to change that: string some wins together. People won't be calling for his job or booing him at Rupp if he's in the midst of a winning streak. So go do it.
Prove me wrong.
Take 3 of the next 4. That should be doable. the schedule isn't getting any easier going forward.
As a fan of Pope the person, I want to give him another year. However, as a fan of the program, I have zero faith in his direction for the future of UK basketball.
1.) Zero incoming elite freshmen signed
2.) He had to outbid other teams to get the current players.
3.) Retention is supposed to be a big thing for him. The chemistry for this team is horrible and the players are not program changers. That said, how many guys stay, and how many do we even want to stay?
4.) How is he going to recruit for next year in the portal? He can't overpay for players again. He can't point to play style. He can't point to prior success in wins. He can't point to getting anyone to the league.
All that said, I do want to keep him another year. Getting rid of him after year two doesn't help luring elite coaches that already have zero issues winning at their current school. I also don't trust Mitch Barnhart to make the next hire.
You don’t have to answer this on the message board: just ask yourself this question. Before the season started, did you look back at last season and think to yourself “wow that was nice. I bet it will be even better with some real talent.” If you didn’t that’s fine…most of us did. It was a very fair consideration. This year, it didn’t work out, but I don’t think it’s completely out of the realm of possibility that he does do exactly that in a year 3. I go back and forth on whether or not he should get a year 3, but I don’t think either position is entirely absurd.
I was still questionable on his defense but thought maybe with better talent he could do well. This team has talent in my opinion, and he hasn’t done a good job, if we had lost games and been competitive it would be different but the team looked completely unprepared against top teams getting completely blown out. Which leaves me to believe he just is what he is as a coach, we’ll see though I guess
OP, there’s a lot of coaches BBN would not be happy with.
Especially in the modern era. The game and industry have just changed so drastically.
Same in football. BBN basketball is kind of experiencing what big dog football fans and programs are going through.
Ironically it’s beneficial to us in FB and we’re all excited about it. Talent gap closing, big dogs not totally dominating and cake walking through 2/3rds of the season. Anyone can hire a pretty good coach because the money and resources are so vast. Pretty much anyone can make the playoffs and win.
In basketball BBN is the old man on the porch yelling about all of the above.
Especially in the modern era. The game and industry have just changed so drastically.
Same in football. BBN basketball is kind of experiencing what big dog football fans and programs are going through.
Ironically it’s beneficial to us in FB and we’re all excited about it. Talent gap closing, big dogs not totally dominating and cake walking through 2/3rds of the season. Anyone can hire a pretty good coach because the money and resources are so vast. Pretty much anyone can make the playoffs and win.
In basketball BBN is the old man on the porch yelling about all of the above.
If this was his second year after a good but not great first year, yeah I think there would be some wanting his head. However, that's not reality and we are influenced by our reality. Oats has 2 SEC Titles, 2 SECT Titles, 1 Final four, several sweet 16's, an elite 8....then I think a lot more people will be hanging in there with him. Apples and oranges.
Did Oats do all that in a year and a half???
Instead of getting in bed with JMI we should've done a 180 and figured out how to resource bourbon and horses. Currently, anything goes.
Except most of the “big boy” programs in both basketball and football are still routinely successful. Kentucky is entering Nebraska football/Indiana basketball territory due to an incompetent AD.
We were historically average last season by Kentucky standards, so that might be a bit of an overstep to say.
2022 Season
Regular Season - One Step Above Average (Two Seed)
NCAA Tournament - Two Steps Below Average (Round of 64)
Overall - One Step Below Average
2023 Season
Regular Season - Three Steps Below Average (6 Seed)
NCAA Tournament - One Step Below Average (Round of 32)
Overall - Four Steps Below Average
2024 Season
Regular Season - Program Average (3 seed)
NCAA Tournament - Two Steps Below Average (Round of 64)
Overall - Two Steps Below Average
2025 Season
Regular Season - Program Average (3 seed)
NCAA Tournament - Program Average (Sweet 16)
I’ve been thinking a lot of the frustration at Pope is actually a lot of late Cal frustration. Yes, this specific season has been awful, but I don’t think fans are just looking at it from the lens of a single frustrating season. I think we are experiencing the long drought of having an above average season and that plays into the fierce desire to win right this second. I listed the most recent Cal seasons and it’s clear Pope hasn’t caused us harm just yet. Maybe he will — idk — we gotta see how this season plays out, but I think we might be giving Pope some of the Cal hate.
In the SEC...starting from scratch...with JMI restrictions....OK....
I think I’m on your side of the argument in terms of “I think I want to give Pope some room to breathe” but just want to point out JMI restrictions were not in place until this summer
You realize you are being attacked from multiple accounts with one common person behind the accounts, right? Major media outlets all have quoted $22MM. I would ignore the puppet master and his accounts.
I think they definitely hurt us in HS recruitment though
I don’t think anyone honest can deny it hurt with Christian Collins and Tyran Stokes specifically. I’ve provided sources that confirm it.
Yeah, we all know the amount of money that was spent on this roster is 22 million dollars, but that makes Pope look so much worse, so there are going to be some guys that fight you tooth and nail on it, because they don't want everyone throwing another negative fact on the huge pile of other negative facts.
I get it though, I hate talking about the negative stuff, because Pope is one of us and he wants UK to win titles as bad as we do. But man, we have to be honest about the state of affairs and the truth is, this is just a colossal failure to this point.
I want to see Pope fix this, because he's a good dude, but I was afraid of this kind of thing happening where we have an inexperienced coach doing on the job training instead of an experienced guy that understands talent and knows what it takes to win.
I bet if he gets hired he will love us suddenly.
I can’t take thinking of watching this staff coach another 14 months. I just can’t take that long a drought of even being competitive. This sucks.
Chicken and egg problem. One thing about Oats — he’s a fascinating man and he loved a to speak his mind. I fully believe he meant what he said. Of course, my wife will tell you I’m wrong about a hundred times more than I’m right, so…maybe the fact that I don’t see it happening makes it a virtual certainty lol
The thing is we have no momentum and no better players in sight for year 3, yeah he has the Portal blah blah blah, but what if he has to overpay again. I will be surprised if he has that kind of money again after this. He may sign the same mismatched players who don’t get along. I don’t trust the staff to assemble a team anymore. They may have been totally lucky that first year. No more 6 year guys either.
Last edited:
Can’t stand Matt Jones but this is something he really would know. He’s as close as any “insider” to the Crafts and he’s made it abundantly clear Pope will be back almost no matter what happens this year. He’s not saying that based on a hunch — you can bet he’s saying that because the donors still believe in Pope enough not to bite the 17mil $ bullet.
I want to see how we play tomorrow against LSU and see if we are running good stuff or revert back to what we were doing. I want to see if we can build a little momentum with the guys that we already have. Going into portal season trying to buy a whole team is totally different than going in to fill certain gaps. I’m not as down on Pope as you — I’m very frustrated and still think he’s *likely* not to make it but something weird happened recently that made me second guess myself on giving up now.
Curt Cignetti makes me want to run through a brick wall...Nate Oats does not....and neither does the self help guru Mark Pope
That’s crazy to me, but idk man I don’t write the checks. It could get really ugly the way recruiting currently looks.
Last edited:
Did beating a 79th ranked Kenpom team make you second guess? That team was not good.
I’m curious about that too, is it the stuff we ran the last 10 minutes because I agree it was the best we looked almost all year. Maybe if that team plays more together.
Yeah sure. What will be your excuse if they blow us out then? And I guess BYU and Michigan are overrated too?