A year ago at this time, Mark Pope’s seat was starting to get a little warmer at BYU after the Cougars finished their final season in the West Coast Conference tied for fifth place with San Francisco and Pacific and n failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament. the second year in a row.
Today he is the head coach at Kentucky.
In the span of 12 months, the hyperbolic and ever-enthusiastic Pope went from a mild case of the blues — by his standards — to one of college basketball’s true blue bloods.
So where does that leave BYU?
Could Pope’s departure be a blessing in disguise for the Cougars? Yeah, probably not. Cal coach Mark Madsen’s statement Friday morning that he would stay in Berkeley put an end to that pipe dream.
When Pope’s name started popping up as a possible candidate for the Kentucky job when John Calipari fled to Arkansas, I immediately thought BYU would be in a world of hurt if big-name candidates such as UConn’s Dan Hurley, Alabama’s Nate Oats and Baylor’s Scott Drew turned down the Wildcats and UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart pursued Pope.
Well, the unthinkable happened.
Everyone in Utah always knew there were only a handful of jobs Pope would leave BYU for, and Kentucky, his alma mater, was at the top of the list. BYU was a good fit for Pope; Kentucky will be a great country – at least that’s what Rick Pitino thinks.
Adding to the problem in Provo is the fact that BYU has perhaps the narrowest pool of coaching candidates in the country, especially if the school adheres to a long-standing practice that its head coaches must be members of the sponsoring faith and supports the institution, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The next John Wooden, or even the next Mark Pope, won’t walk through that door.
The chances of BYU landing a Pope replacement with prior Division I head coaching experience are slim to none. UNLV assistant Barret Peery, a four-year average coach at Portland State, is about the only viable candidate who checks that box.
That’s not to say Pope was perfect during his five-year tenure at BYU after arriving from Utah Valley; His success last season as BYU went 10-8 and finished fifth in the Big 12 after being picked to finish 13th cannot be ignored. It was a remarkable coaching job, especially considering this was pretty much the same team that went 19-15 the previous season.
But let’s also not forget Pope’s shortcomings at BYU. It lost two first-round games in the Big Dance that it was favored to win, against UCLA and Duquesne, and was never able to surpass Saint Mary’s as the second-best team in the WCC behind Gonzaga, among other glaring shortcomings that should and give to Kentucky. fans have heartburn.
Still, BYU will have a hard time replacing him. A really difficult time.
The impact on the program will be immediate and could be devastating, especially if some of the players Pope received to go to BYU follow him to Lexington. Or go somewhere else. Keeping four-star recruit Collin Chandler at BYU will be whoever the new coach’s first order of business is when the Farmington High product returns from his church mission this summer.
Pope will almost certainly take some of his BYU assistants with him to Kentucky, as he did on UVU’s nine-minute drive to BYU in 2019. BYU fans should at least expect assistant Cody Fueger and to the director of player personnel. Keegan Brown, an analytics guru and a largely unsung player in Pope’s success in Provo, to follow Pope to Kentucky.
Fueger would be an excellent choice to replace Pope, if the BYU board could overlook the fact that he is not a member of a church.
As for current players, there probably isn’t anyone on BYU’s 2023-24 roster who could crack the rotation at Kentucky, with the possible exception of Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year, Jaxson Robinson, who transferred to BYU from one of UK’s SECs. rivals, Arkansas.
Robinson has not yet announced whether he will stay at BYU for another year, enter the transfer portal or declare for the NBA draft. Provo residents close to Robinson say it will almost certainly be one of the latter two options.
Late Thursday night, as reports surfaced online that Pope was changing his shade of blue and reporters around the world scrambled for confirmation, a current BYU basketball player who wished to remain anonymous told me he was already contacted by “representatives” from other schools. to assess his interest in leaving.
Do you remember when football coach Bronco Mendenhall left for Virginia at the end of the 2015 season, leaving BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe in a difficult position to find a replacement from a pool of candidates also restricted?
It was an OK transition – at first.
The Cougar Gridders went 8-4 in Kalani Sitake’s first year — mostly with Mendenhall’s rookies — and Bronco didn’t miss much.
Then the program fell back for a few years before Sitake regained his footing, and BYU’s handling of the pandemic got the program back on track. I’ve said it before: No football program in the country has benefited as much from COVID-19 as BYU.
There’s no doubt there will be growing pains for a basketball program that was just beginning to make a dent nationally, after beating San Diego State, Kansas, Baylor and Iowa State in 2023-24.
It remains to be seen how quickly BYU can recover after the loss of its Pope.