{"id":27878,"date":"2025-07-22T05:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27878\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T05:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:27:11","slug":"mark-pope-recalls-wild-rick-pitino-story-from-1996-kentucky-basketball-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27878\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Pope recalls wild Rick Pitino story from 1996 Kentucky basketball season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The post Mark Pope recalls wild Rick Pitino story from 1996 Kentucky basketball season<\/a> appeared first on ClutchPoints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Pope<\/a> is now the head coach of the Kentucky basketball<\/a> team, but he used to be a player for the Wildcats back in the day. When Pope played at Kentucky, he was coached by current St. John\u2019s basketball coach Rick Pitino. Pitino and Pope<\/a> won a national championship with the Wildcats in 1996, and Pope recently recalled a story from that season. Pitino had big expectations<\/a> for that team from the start, and he wouldn\u2019t accept anything short of greatness.<\/p>\n

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Rick Pitino<\/a> is one of the best coaches in college basketball history, and a big reason why is his unique style. He coaches his players in a different way than others, but he gets the best out of them. Not every coach would approach the 1996 season like he did, but it paid off for the Kentucky basketball team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was different. He just told us that if we didn\u2019t win every game, he was gonna kill us,\u201d Mark Pope said with a chuckle, according to a video from Tristan Pharis. \u201cAnd I never knew exactly what that meant. If he was just gonna kill us figuratively in practice, or actually kill us. It was probably some grouping of both, but the expectation was exactly the same, and it\u2019s been the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope now has the same expectations for his Kentucky teams. It\u2019s been 30 years, but nothing has changed for the Wildcats.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, the expectation here has nothing to do with me setting it,\u201d Pope continued. \u201cIt\u2019s what it is at Kentucky. It\u2019s one of the things that sets us apart from every other program in the country. I happen to love it. I love every bit of it. I\u2019m grateful. I\u2019m so grateful to be here where the expectation is only one ending to the season actually makes it a satisfying season. I\u2019m grateful to be in this environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Not everybody is built for a program like Kentucky, but Pope is, and the players who he recruits are as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt comes with everything that you guys all know that it comes with, but that\u2019s where I want to be, and I\u2019m grateful,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where our guys want to be, and they feel it. It comes with all the complications you can imagine, but as an athlete, those are the complications you want to sign up for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Pope had a successful first season with the Kentucky basketball program<\/a>, but the Wildcats weren\u2019t the last teaming standing. They didn\u2019t meet those lofty expectations that are apparently there before every season, so they will look to be better next year.<\/p>\n

Related: Former top-20 recruit cleared to return for Kansas after serious knee injury<\/a><\/p>\n

Related: Big 12 rejects Memphis\u2019 $200 million offer to join conference<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The post Mark Pope recalls wild Rick Pitino story from 1996 Kentucky basketball season appeared first on ClutchPoints.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,569,22712,398,400,401,14601,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-27878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-kentucky","10":"tag-mark-pope","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaabasketball","14":"tag-rick-pitino","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}