Although it fell short of his very high expectations, Mark Pope\u2019s first season at Kentucky was a success. He took the Cats back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2019, tied the NCAA record for wins against AP Top 15 teams (including some of Kentucky\u2019s top rivals), and pumped life back into a weary fanbase. Year one also paid dividends on the recruiting trail, giving top prospects an idea of what the Pope era at Kentucky might look like after 15 years with John Calipari at the helm.<\/p>\n
Fresh off back-to-back recruiting weekends, Pope was asked how the perception of the program has changed since this time last year. Pope admitted that last summer, his pitch was met with some hesitancy as players debated joining a team built from scratch to play for a coach with only one year of power conference experience, zero NCAA Tournament wins, and zero NBA Draft picks. <\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, the question was, when we first got here, \u2018Who am I going to play with?\u2019 So that was the overwhelming question. And then the second question, just the underlying kind of thing, was, \u2018What\u2019s it going to be?\u2019 I mean, you\u2019re coming in here with nothing to show after a Hall of Famer left, right? And so, some people were brave enough to address that head-on, and some people just, it was an underlying kind of vibe that you just knew that you had to hit hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those players who were brave enough to sign on for year one of the Mark Pope era overachieved and provided a sample size of what the future may look like. Now, recruits have on-court proof of Pope\u2019s system in the form of a Sweet 16, signature wins, and two NBA Draft picks, Koby Brea<\/a> and Amari Williams<\/a>, neither of whom was considered a serious pro prospect a year ago. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.<\/a><\/p>\n That shift in attitude was immediately apparent this spring as Kentucky started hauling in stars from the transfer portal, most notably Jayden Quaintance<\/a>, the former five-star prospect who originally committed to UK under John Calipari and reopened his recruitment when Pope took over. More than once, Quaintance has said that after watching Pope and the Cats from afar, he liked what he saw, enough to leave Arizona State, where he was named to the Big 12 All-Freshman and All-Defensive teams. He\u2019s the top pro prospect in what many have called the best transfer portal class in the country. Mark Pope\u2019s second roster also features four returning players, including preseason SEC Player of the Year candidate Otega Oweh<\/a>; four-star high school recruits Jasper Johnson<\/a>, Malachi Moreno<\/a>, and Braydon Hawthorne<\/a>; and Croatian stretch forward Andrija Jelavic<\/a>.<\/p>\n