Kentucky basketball coaching search ends with Mitch Barnhart having questions to answer

Let’s get something clear up front: Mark Pope is a good basketball coach.

At BYU, the ex-Kentucky center and new UK head man deployed a thoroughly modern, entertaining offensive style. Last season, only one team in NCAA Division I men’s hoops (North Florida) attempted more 3-point shots than the 32 a game hoisted by Pope’s Cougars.

In their first season in the basketball-stout Big 12, Pope and BYU went 23-11, 10-8 in league play, and scored marquee victories over eventual NCAA Tournament darling North Carolina State, 2023 national runner-up San Diego State, No. 11 Baylor — and over No. 7 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.

BYU ended the 2023-24 season ranked No. 18 in the Pomeroy Ratings. You Basketball Bennies will note that was five spots better than Kentucky finished.

So there’s a more than viable chance that Pope, 51, will do good work running the basketball program for which he was a contributing big man on Rick Pitino’s 1996 NCAA championship team.

Yet the Kentucky coaching search that led to the surprise selection of Pope as John Calipari’s successor as Wildcats head man ends with UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart having some questions that need to be answered.

Those questions start with Billy Donovan.

There were indications that some in the basketball community interpreted as the Chicago Bulls head man and former Florida Gators coach potentially being receptive to a Kentucky overture.

Obviously, the timing was not going to be great. Donovan’s Bulls will be participating in the NBA Play-In Tournament with a chance to advance into the playoffs themselves.

Given the realities of modern college basketball roster construction, it is understandable why UK felt pressure to get a coach in place quickly. In an era of free transfers, the new Kentucky head man will probably need to build the 2024-25 Wildcats roster all but from scratch upon his arrival in Lexington.

Waiting on Donovan to end his NBA season may well have undermined Kentucky’s efforts in the transfer portal this spring. Ultimately, that may have sabotaged the competitiveness of the team UK will put on the floor next winter.

Yet, in the big picture, hiring Donovan, who won two NCAA championships and went to four Final Fours while toiling at football-centric Florida prior to his NBA days, would seem to have been worth that price.

Having already offered the Kentucky job to Donovan twice, in 2007 when Tubby Smith left and again in 2009 after Billy Gillispie was cashiered, why wouldn’t UK wait on Billy D. this time when some thought the coach seemed to have incentive to finally say yes to Kentucky?

As of Friday morning, there were media reports that UK did reach out to Donovan and/or his representatives. If that is so, Barnhart would help Pope — and himself — by sharing that information with Kentucky backers.

A fan base that is restive due to the competitive slippage in the UK program in the latter years of the Calipari era, was looking to this coaching search to reaffirm the supremacy of the Kentucky basketball program.

Instead, Barnhart and UK have selected a coach with less “star power” than most modern hires have brought to the Wildcats coaching job.

The UK pattern has been to hire coaches with Final Four trips on their resumes. Or sitting NBA head coaches. Or coaches who have taken unlikely college programs on multiple runs to the NCAA tourney round of 16.

Pope has done none of that.

Kentucky is asking Pope to take on a hard job under circumstances likely to make his task more difficult.

Even with all that, there are some things Kentucky backers should keep in mind:

After Roy Williams stepped down as North Carolina head man, the Tar Heels elevated an assistant, Hubert Davis, with no head-coaching experience.

When Mike Krzyzewski hung up his whistle at Duke, the Blue Devils replaced him with an assistant, Jon Scheyer, who had never been a college head coach.

Following the end of Jim Boeheim’s long reign as Syracuse coach, the Orange turned to an assistant, Adrian Autry, who had never been a college head man.

After doing good work as the head coach at both Utah Valley and BYU, Pope will come to the UK job with better qualifications than any of that trio had.

One other advantage Pope will bring to his new job is passion: There is no one walking this Earth who loves the UK basketball program more than Mark Pope.

The married father of four girls transferred that ardor for Kentucky blue to his family.

When Pope decided after completing two years of medical school at Columbia University to give up on becoming a doctor to instead coach college basketball, his first job was director of basketball operations at the University of Georgia.

For the Bulldogs first trip to Rupp Arena to face Kentucky during Pope’s tenure at Georgia, his wife, Lee Anne, wanted all four of the Pope girls to dress in red and black.

The couple’s second-oldest daughter, Avery, refused to enter Rupp Arena in such dress. She only relented after her mom took her to a store and they bought Avery some “Kentucky socks” to wear underneath all that Georgia red.

For fans who thought the prior coaching regime did not make UK basketball enough about Kentucky, you now have a coach who loves the Wildcats program like you do.

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