‘It just feels different.’ Mark Pope talks about the experience of recruiting to Kentucky.

Kentucky basketball’s offseason of change — which has included a brand-new coaching staff and roster arriving in Lexington — has featured one important constant: The Wildcats have still been as active as ever on the high school recruiting trail.

From Argentina to Texas, new UK basketball coach Mark Pope and the members of his coaching staff permitted to go out recruiting (associate head coach Alvin Brooks III and assistant coaches Cody Fueger and Jason Hart) have been seen the world over scouting potential future UK players.

On Tuesday, Pope finally had a moment to reflect on what recruiting has been like for him since he was named the Kentucky head coach April 12.

“Every time that I get to walk into a building with ‘UK’ on my chest, it just feels different, recruiting,” Pope said Tuesday afternoon during his first media-only press conference as UK’s head coach.

“And it looks different: I’m a way handsomer guy with ‘UK’ on my chest.”

Pope’s first media gathering, held April 14 on the Rupp Arena floor while a packed crowd of UK fans observed from the stands, came during a tenuous time for both the present and future of UK’s roster.

But in the two-plus months since, Pope and his coaching staff (which also includes assistant coaches Mark Fox and Mikhail McLean) have assembled a roster from essentially scratch, while also establishing important relationships with future college prospects.

Of the 12 scholarship players on Kentucky’s roster for next season, nine arrived via the NCAA transfer portal. This incoming transfer class — headlined by former Delaware and Wake Forest forward Andrew Carr, former Arizona and West Virginia guard Kerr Kriisa and former San Diego State guard Lamont Butler — ranks as the sixth-best incoming portal class in the country, according to college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa.

Simultaneously, Pope and his coaching staff have made inroads with players in the 2025 and 2026 recruiting classes.

This includes players that UK initially recruited when John Calipari was the head coach, such as class of 2025 Kentucky natives Jasper Johnson (previously of Woodford County) and Malachi Moreno (Great Crossing).

On Monday, Moreno included UK among his top eight schools, along with Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisville, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Ohio State.

Pope has also re-offered scholarships to several top recruits that Calipari first recruited to Kentucky, like top-ranked class of 2025 player AJ Dybantsa and fellow class of 2025 standout Darryn Peterson.

Pope and his staff have also quickly and efficiently established their own big board of recruits for future UK basketball recruiting classes.

Kentucky has issued a number of scholarship offers in recent weeks, including to the following class of 2025 prospects:

▪ Shooting guard Braylon Mullins (the No. 75 overall player in the class per the 247Sports Composite).

▪ Combo guard Acaden Lewis (No. 49).

▪ Power forward Niko Bundalo (No. 24).

▪ Power forward Nate Ament (No. 14).

▪ Center Chris Cenac Jr. (No. 17).

▪ Center Eric Reibe (No. 41).

“It just comes out of my soul, every time I get to introduce myself to a recruit and say, ‘I’m Coach Pope, the head coach at the University of Kentucky,’” Pope recounted. “That doesn’t roll off my tongue. It catches me every single time, because I know what this job is.”

Of course, while the classes of 2025 and 2026 are in the future, Pope and the Wildcats still have a scholarship open for the 2024-25 roster.

Pope said Tuesday there are numerous circumstances that could see that scholarship come into play for UK, which has used 12 of its 13 allotted scholarships for next season.

“I think we had a pretty good feel of where we were (with the 13th scholarship) a couple weeks ago, and it’s just been confirmed more than anything else,” Pope said following the start of summer practice for the Wildcats. “... We’re still kind of floating with it, and we’ll see. We’ll spend a ton of time this summer out on the road ... including some international things. There’s always unique things that happen there late. And there’s also interesting things that always happen late in the (United) States. So, we’ll kind of play it by ear.”

Mark Pope, Kentucky basketball continue future recruiting efforts

The talent identification process undertaken this spring and summer has seen Kentucky’s coaches hit recruiting events hard.

Among the events Pope and his assistants have attended over the last few months are: The Nike Elite Youth Basketball League and the Charlie Hughes Showcase in Indiana, the Adidas 3SSB circuit and the TABC Boys Showcase in Texas, the Puma PRO16/NXT circuit in Kansas, the USA Basketball U18 Men’s National Team training camp in Colorado, the NBPA Top 100 Camp in Florida, the DC Live and DMV Live events in the Washington D.C. area., the Section 7 event in Arizona, the FIBA Men’s Under-18 AmeriCup in Argentina and the KABC Titans Shootout in Shelbyville.

These recruiting trips have come in addition to Kentucky hosting several prospects in Lexington for both unofficial and official recruiting visits.

Pope’s first big splash on the recruiting scene came earlier this month, when Canadian prep star Will Riley took an official visit to Lexington. Riley — a five-star recruit who was initially in the 2025 recruiting class, but has since reclassified to the 2024 group — committed to Illinois on Sunday.

While Pope wasn’t able to stick the landing on his first major recruit, his pursuit of Riley — along with the travel logged by UK coaches over the past few weeks — is indicative of the recruiting mindset Pope will employ with the Wildcats.

“I got to coach at a great institution before this at BYU that had some significant filters in terms of the players that would fit in that program,” Pope said. “Certainly Kentucky has massive filters also, because there’s just not that many players that are built to play here. They’ve got to be the best players in the country and they’ve got to want to take on the most amount of pressure and scrutiny of any players in the country. They have the highest standard of any program in the country. So finding those pieces is different also. It’s kind of a nice mix.”

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