Mark Pope’s summer construction job is about more than just basketball

So Mark Pope held a mid-summer press conference Tuesday at the Joe Craft Center in which Kentucky’s new head men’s basketball coach talked on numerous topics, most of which had absolutely little to do with basketball.

Or at least basketball in its strictest sense. Pope didn’t speak about offensive sets, or three-point shooting, or defensive strategy or rebounding or anything specifically concerning what actually happens on that 94 feet long by 50 feet wide piece of hardwood known as the basketball court.

Instead, Pope told us about how two of his new players, one of whom was going through a tough time, took two hours together to write a secret song and how the coach will pay a nice ransom to anyone who can find it online and send it to him.

“Somebody please get that recording because I want to hear it,” Pope pleaded.

The English major talked about one his favorite English professors during his time at UK, Dr. Joan Blythe, would not be happy that her former Rhodes Scholar candidate has a no-synonym, no-colorful language rule for himself and his new staff.

“We actually just say exactly what we mean and we say the same words over and over and over again,” he said. “And you’re starting to hear our guys to each other use our exact words.”

He talked about how he believes in a “player-led team and a player-led organization” — not to be confused with a “players first” program (my clarification, not his) — where his players reach the point where they are holding each other accountable.

“We believe in leading from the middle, not from out front,” Pope said. “Our guys’ voices will always be more powerful than mine.”

It made me recall a quote from three-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh who said that when you get your players to the point where they don’t want to let their teammates down, then a coach knows he has done his job.

After all, Pope’s first edition of Wildcats is a melting pot of different players from different locations and different programs who have only one thing in common. They have all taken a leap of faith into the same boat.

Only one of those players is familiar with the head coach. That would be Jaxson Robinson, the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year who followed Pope from Provo and BYU to Lexington and UK.

“I bumble around and Jaxson will say, ‘All right guys, this is what he really means,’” Pope said. “He’ll double down on the ideas of like, ‘Hey guys, this is really important. You’re going to hear this, what we’ve been talking about, you’re going to hear every single day for the rest of the season. And then there’s a lot of things where Jax is like, ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’”

Big Blue Nation is listening. You can bet on that. With construction workers busy renovating inside the adjacent Memorial Coliseum, every media seat and television camera space inside the lobby of the Craft Center was filled for Pope’s question and answer session.

My question: What has been the hardest part of the job so far? Is it just finding the time to do everything that needs to be done?

“Wow, I don’t know how to answer that question,” said the coach. “Everything is challenging in the way you would expect it to be. But it’s like all the challenges kind of fade away into the sheer awesomeness of getting to do this, of being here with you guys and being able to be with the guys on the court and this staff.

“This staff, we can’t get through a staff meeting, we can’t even finish a staff meeting. It always breaks out into someone running out of the room because they’re laughing so hard. It’s a ton of time, but it’s the greatest challenge that we’ll ever face in our professional careers and it’s pretty exciting.”

Basketball aside, that’s what it’s all about.

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