Why bring Pope back for year 3?
- Thread starter true-blue1
- Start date
Because Kentucky under Mitch Barnhart would rather hold on to bad coaches and lose than to admit a hire was bad and pull the plug. They’d rather overpay average coaches and play landlord, why worry about a win or a loss, this is about collective revenue. Wins and losses are just something people talk about it doesn’t actually matter. “Winning and losing matters but” - quote directly out of Mitch’s mouth. With most program especially elite programs, there is no but.
Kentucky is behind on NIL because the BOT and Mitch don’t want a penny going out to anyone that they don’t want. Players? They don’t want. They view it as profit loss. So we’ve gotten behind on every aspect because of the people in charge. Which brings us to archaic ways of doing things, and thus, we must give 3rd and 4th years because decades ago, you had to give coaches time. Never mind Pope has been given well over 20 million dollar at minimum to buy rosters since he got here. We must go by old wore out bs ways. We must wait for the bottom to fall completely out before we move.
This is your administration.
Kentucky is behind on NIL because the BOT and Mitch don’t want a penny going out to anyone that they don’t want. Players? They don’t want. They view it as profit loss. So we’ve gotten behind on every aspect because of the people in charge. Which brings us to archaic ways of doing things, and thus, we must give 3rd and 4th years because decades ago, you had to give coaches time. Never mind Pope has been given well over 20 million dollar at minimum to buy rosters since he got here. We must go by old wore out bs ways. We must wait for the bottom to fall completely out before we move.
This is your administration.
Golden at Kentucky would be like handing Stonewall Jackson a 100,000 man army and saying, "Do whatever you have to do."
He would dominate at Kentucky.
Golden would win hard and fast at Kentucky. It would be decisive. Regardless of what people think I’ve been around to most SEC towns and seen their places. Kentucky basketball is not something that’s close to the others. Florida basketball has done well for what they are, it’s been a very lucky ride for them, but they’ve done well. Golden is still not even hardly recognized there. Florida residents, most of them, aren’t Florida gator fans. A lot of Florida fans aren’t basketball fans at all. People that follow Florida basketball is a small, small, minority. At Kentucky, it’s bigger than the governor himself. Golden would take Kentucky in a heartbeat unless he wants the NBA. Golden is a headhunter. He wants to be the best you can see it all over him.
This is going to happen how people see it. We’re stuck with Pope until he either bombs our next season or down the road. My fear is Mark wins to his averages and the BOT continues with the “another year” nonsense for the next 7 because he reaches a sweet 16 every other year here and there. We’ve already got fans that would want him retained over 3 or 4 sweet 16’s in a 10 year period. It’s insanity.
How the optics going to look when we suck another year? F the optics.
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. Most know he's going to be here in year three and are rolling their eyes at you guys saying the same thing every hour of every day like some afflicted weirdo.
Top PGs in no particular order below. I didn't add the ones I believe will be drafted in the top 20. Assume they enter portal and 2nd don't go pro. I stayed in the top 30 ranking on each category and the class next to their name is for this year only.
Scoring PG
JR - Josh Hubbard - Miss St
FR - Ebuka Ekorie - Stanford
JR - Tariq Francis - Rutgers
SO - Tyler Tanner - Vandy
SO - Terrence Hill Jr - VCU
SO - Labaron Philon - Bama
JR - Barrington Hargress - Colorado
JR - Aden Holloway - Bama
SO - John Mobley Jr - Ohio St
Pure PG
SO - Christian Anderson - Texas Tech
JR - Colby Garland - San Jose St
FR - Acaden Lewis - Villanova
SO - Joshua Dent - St Mary's
FR - Nigel James Jr - Marquette
Danny Hurley was 16-17 in year 1, 19-12 in year 2. Now I don’t know if Pope can turn it around like Hurley did but at least there is precedent.
Precedent involving a time when there was no NIL and the transfer portal wasn’t as prolific. Coaches have new teams every year now. If you want to see precedent then here is this: Pope has went 6th and 9th in the SEC with two different teams.
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Yeah and regardless of nil or not, you’d have been on the fire Hurley train.
Correct. We have Barnhart until June. No new coach until at least April 2027, if then.
He's a glorified f---ing gym teacher but he deserves a third season to prove himself? Why not just let a lucky fan coach for a year then
Not to mention. Hurley took over a team, much like Pitino did with UK, that was just placed on probation by the NCAA. Even though they lost to St Peter’s and Oakland, Pope took over a team that was a 2 and a 3 seed in the NCAA tournament the previous two years before Pope. We have had an embarrassing drop off and it’s not debatable.
Hurley had already proved at Rhode Island that he was on the way to being an elite coach
You’re delusional thinking Pope will end up like Hurley. It’s ridiculous, even more ridiculous than the fans who think we should move on after year 2. Many of us are warning you of what is potentially going happen next year with likely no recruits and potentially a less talented team than this year. Fans warned every one of what bringing Joker and Stoops back and they were right. The writing is on the wall.
Now there’s rumors of Pope bringing in another one of his BYU buddies as GM.
What would you do with this.
year 1: sweet 16
Year 2: 2nd round
Year 3: second round
Year 4: 1st round
Year 5: sweet 16
Year 6: sweet 16
Year 7: missed tournament
Year 8: sweet 16
Would that make it to year 8 for Mark if you were calling the shots? And would he get year 9 if so.
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We have 13 years of Pope coaching to know there’s not some big turnaround right around the corner. Nothing in his resume suggests that it is. He doesn’t have the recruiting chops to get a major upgrade in talent.
Pope is who he is. A coach that will win 63% of his games, and occasionally win 70%.
This has been discussed and the Hurley stuff has long since been shown to be completely irrelevant to this situation.
There is no regardless of NIL. You can’t dismiss the facts and pretend it’s irrelevant. That’s not how this works.
He didn’t have it and UConn was in literal pieces. It wasn’t just about wins and losses either, it was about the conference issues and how bad that program was left. And there was NO WAY to build a roster by buying players. There is ZERO logic in comparing those situations. If that’s what you’re doing. Hurley was also a beast at St. Benedict and turned them into a national powerhouse with a 92% winning percentage and coached pros. He won conference titles at his next stop. UConn isn’t Kentucky, he was given just enough time considering the factors he had. Mark has nothing in common with that situation. We are in a totally different tier and a totally different era and mark is a totally different coach. It’s no comparison on any front.
It’s so different it’s intellectually dishonest to even try to make this comparison, it shouldn’t even come up. At this point, I don’t know what to say about people still trying this. It’s either some are lying, ignoring reality, or confirmation bias that can’t be let go of. The facts are the facts. To look at just “years given” is void of all context and all you have to do is look at the facts to see it in about 3 minutes of time. But I don’t think most doing it are interested in facts.
Look where UConn was when Hurley got there:
2016-2017: 16-17
2017-2018: 14-18
Keep in mind, that his first couple formative years at UConn were pre-NIL and transfer portal.
We’re talking about the same people who claim we’re down 3 starters. They’re lying out their butts.
And there ya go being rational when ya know damn well nobody on here understands logical thinking.
The 3 injured players thing sends me into walls. Mark can keep his job forever. Just recruit a few injured guys that have bad legs and when you suck by march just say we’ve got injuries. It’s literally the same thing they’re doing now.
Never mind also that we improved when the mid clunker and Kam were removed because roles were better defined and Oweh and Chandler actually grew because he had to keep them in the court. Never mind any of that. wEvE gOt iNjUrIeS
Yeah, I'm with ya.. but you'll be pissed when those type guys have to win games in ugly rock fight type games, too.
It seems that the majority of division 1 level coaches struggle with the same thing. That is stubbornness. It's like it's a personality trait of most coaches. Would make it so much easier for them and everyone involved if that wasn't the case. But it seems that many of them are too egotistical to admit to themselves that they might have some things to learn. They might give lip service to changing their rotations and philosophy, etc. But when the chips are down their stubbornness wins out and it's business as usual.
His buyout is not too large. The increased gifting we would receive would more than offset the buyout. The big gain would be the chance of getting our program back that we are again proud to let people know we are BBN. Currently and possibly even more next year with Pope we will be embarrassed to be a UK fan.
Recruiting to Gainesville is a lot easier than Lexington. There is no guarantee of great success.
Uh no, it’s not. It’s not at all. Much of this depends on who coaches are obviously, but all equal or similar with coaching staffs it’s much easier to recruit to Lexington.
Go back 80 years and tell me how many times Florida had a better class lol. Let’s do it. I’m gonna go ahead tell me what you think the record will be for Florida out recruiting UK over the last 80 years?
Where does some of this come from? Easier to recruit to Gainesville in basketball? Than a blue blood? Seriously where does some of this come from?
Maybe, but that's also a weird thing to say as someone who thinks Pope can be successful as UK''s basketball coach
There’s zero reason unless he miraculously goes to a final four this year. And that will take one heck of a miracle.
Mid major programs celebrate Sweet Sixteens, bud
Yea it’s kind of a gift and a curse. Being a leader requires knowing what to want, believing in yourself, and that requires a belief that will most certainly lead to a stubbornness. Once they see their methods work, hard to tell them to change it. None of which really describes Mark though, because doing things his way really didn’t get him here. He was at a small program and was Mormon from Utah, and being Mormon landed him the BYU gig when BYU was smaller and in a mid major conference. Thats then how he landed in the power 5, then down the road he landed 5th 5th 5th, and BYU was most certainly , if what they do now is any indication, gonna move on him at some point. From there Mitch Barnhart decided to throw a lifeline and a program he was nowhere close to being good enough for. So mark being stubborn is ridiculously stupid. His methods didn’t get him here. I get it for Calipari, Hurly, the good ones. But mark has no reason to believe his way will lead to success. It NEVER HAS.
Mark to me might be the luckiest guy I’ve ever seen. To make it to being a 96 champ when there were far better players, to getting to catch a blue blood because of circumstances….a 63% winning percentage guy without a single chsnpionship in league, conference, tournament, zero tournament wins etc. all the way to Kentucky. From zero to, well, zero, to Kentucky. I’d like someone to show me a luckier sports figure than that.