WESTFIELD, Ind. — Mark Pope looked like a new kid in school, wanting to impress both the cool kids and the teachers. He wore all the big brands, including blue Kentucky quarter-zips, white Nike kicks, and a black Louis Vuitton backpack, and had some geeky stuff hidden inside. He certainly did his homework. After slipping into his courtside seat at Nike's EYBL recruiting event last weekend, Pope pulled out a giant black binder filled with lists, charts, schedules and notes. Inside was an analytical report on every high school player Pope was scheduled to watch over the weekend, the NCAA's first live evaluation period since he became head coach at his alma mater.
This was an important checkpoint.
It didn't take long for Pope to prove his mastery of the transfer portal, acquiring eight players from there in his first month on the job. And he's not stopping there, as coveted North Florida transfer guard Chaz Lanier took an official visit to Lexington on Monday. What remains to be seen, however, is how Pope will approach recruiting the elite prep players that his predecessor, John Calipari, has worked hard on over the past decade and a half. Pope wasn't seriously attracted to five-star prospects in his first nine seasons as head coach at Utah Valley and BYU, but now he's suddenly emerging deep in the talent pool. . Last weekend we got our first glimpse of how well he can swim in those waters. It was also a stark reminder of what a wild offseason this has been.
During one game, Pope sat a few feet away from Calipari, who was wearing an Arkansas uniform, while Baylor coach Scott Drew and Connecticut coach Dan Hurley stood nearby, and they exchanged many laughs. Ta. Drew was Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart's first choice to replace Calipari, and Hurley was one of the top booster candidates, but both are leaving where they already won a national championship. I had no intention of doing so. Now, Pope is competing for talent with all three coaches who won the title, as well as many others. So what is his approach?
“We're getting the best players we can get here, and the best players we can get at Kentucky are the best players,” Pope said. The Athletic Saturday at an EYBL event outside Indianapolis. “I'm used to playing with a relatively limited depth, and Kentucky has a relatively limited depth, so it's a little different kind of player. The players that are right for Kentucky are the best in college basketball. Those are the players, so we go after those guys, and out of that group, we go after the players that really fit the way we attack and the way we play.”
Pope vowed in his inaugural press conference that Kentucky wasn't going to stop landing the McDonald All-American just because Calipari made the call to the Hogs. The players Pope and his staff watched last weekend included at least seven top-five players in the 2025 and 2026 classes, plus several more five-star players on both the Nike and Adidas circuits. It suggests Mr. Pope is serious about that promise. But Pope is also concerned about continuity and player development, and plans to recruit a more diverse group of prospects than Calipari typically did.
The plans are in a giant binder that's part of an ever-evolving sorting system.
“It's a balance. We're really stratifying our kids,” Pope said. “Kids that we think are one-and-done that we really want to get. We think there's another tier of players that can join the rotation as freshmen. Players say, “Hey, that kid is going to add something to our program as a freshman, even if he's not in the rotation, and that's going to give us the biggest win. ” Play a college basketball game as a junior or senior. ” So we rank players and then we go hunting, and we do our best to be very selective about each group of players that we recruit hard. ”
Mark Pope and John Calipari shared a laugh at the Nike EYBL event in Indianapolis this past weekend.
One player Pope seemed to be enamored with on the Nike circuit was Tunde Yesufu, a 6-foot-5, 210-pound forward who scored (23.0) and rebounded (7.5) per game. Ranked in the top 5 of EYBL. He's a top-25 five-star prospect in the 2025 class, and Pope has already made contact.
“He loves my energy, says I have a killer instinct, and is a fan of my game,” Yesufou said. “I love the way he speaks. I feel like he's the type of coach who tells me where I need to improve the most and pushes me to get really good. When we talk on the phone, he's great. You have energy and a coach like that brings out the best version of yourself.”
Yessoufou also reminds us that while Calipari's reputation for producing a ton of pros is a key factor in recruiting top talent, Kentucky's own brand is still pretty strong as well.
“This was my dream school when I came to the United States,” said Yesufu, who is originally from West Africa. But has the coaching change changed that dream? “Absolutely not. Coach Pope played there, played in the NBA, and is a really good coach. He's one of the things I like about Kentucky.”
Point guard Brandon McCoy, arguably the top prospect in 2026, said he wrote down his goal of earning scholarship offers from Kentucky and Duke and posted it on his childhood bedroom wall. Although he had not yet spoken to Pope, he said he was “looking forward to meeting him.”
Jasper Johnson, the No. 11 player in the class of 2025 according to the 247Sports Composite, got a call from Pope last Thursday night. The Cats' new coach told him he'd be at his EYBL game over the weekend, and Johnson grinned when he said it'd be hard to miss the 6-foot-10 coach in a bright blue shirt sitting right under the basket, as Pope was on Saturday.
Johnson represents the best of both worlds in Pope's approach to roster construction. He is a homegrown prospect who grew up rooting for Kentucky, and his father, Dennis, was a star football player at Kentucky during the Tim Couch era. And he's a future McDonald's All-American.
“Kentucky is always a school that I respect,” Johnson said. “I know they're busy building their roster, but now that the portal is out, they're thinking more about recruiting and I'm learning more about Coach Pope. His offense is guard He told me he was one of the few high school players he wanted to play as many high school players as he's ever been. I don't want to sign because I need an older player, a portal player, so it feels good that he believes in me that way.”
Johnson said he plans to visit Kentucky's campus again this summer to spend time around his new staff and “build bonds.”
Those relationships are so important in recruiting, which is one reason Pope's hiring of an assistant coach was so important. Pope has existing connections and status with elite talent in Baylor University's ace recruiter Alvin Brooks III and former NBA player and recent G League Ignite head coach Jason Hart. was acquired. Hudson Grier and Shelton Anderson, two top-50 recruits from Texas who were standouts on the Nike circuit last weekend, were scouted by Brooks at Baylor University — and now Brooks has them at Kentucky. praises the virtues of
Among the players Hart scouted for the now-defunct Ignite were Jasper Johnson and AJ Divanza, the No. 1 player in the 2025 class. “He's a good guy. I like him a lot,” Divanza's father, Ace, said. Pope formally offered Divanza a scholarship two weeks ago, telling him he was “just trying to keep the brand going after Cal is gone.” Getting that kind of talent would help, and Hart gave UK a chance. Ignite was a pro-friendly option that wasn't bound by NCAA rules about how and when high school players and their families could be contacted.
“He had special access to a lot of guys in a way that other guys didn't,” Pope said, “and you're not going to meet anybody in the world who does it better than Jason Hart. He has infectious energy, he's really smart and he loves the game so much that he can spend all day in the gym every day.”
On Saturday, nearing the 10th hour of a 12-hour day of non-stop grassroots basketball, Hart sat alone in the bleachers with no notes or roster in front of him for a change of pace. This matchup apparently didn't include any players Kentucky saw or was seen in the building. That's because one of his habits at events like this is to pick a few matches for blind viewing and watch with fresh eyes without any preconceptions about who the stars are. is. See who pops out. If you haven’t hired that person yet, why not?
“In fact, I think that's in the DNA of all of my staff,” Pope said of that thoroughness. He called Brooks “one of the elite recruiters in college basketball because he has such deep and meaningful relationships with his players.”
Kentucky's new crew – minus Cody “Boom” Fuger. He is scheduled to be here tomorrow after spending two days at the Adidas circuit. pic.twitter.com/mOtxZoC0ul
— Kyle Tucker (@KyleTucker_ATH) May 19, 2024
Pope's third traveling recruiter, Cody Fueger, brings a different perspective to the process. He worked under Pope at Utah Valley and BYU, and previously at Utah State University, the University of California, Riverside and Louisiana Tech University. Fuger spent Friday and Saturday at the Adidas circuit in Bryan, Texas, where he was joined by top-40 prospects in the state, Malachi Moreno, and Calipari's target, who Pope has already re-offered, No. 3 Darrin Peterson of UK. I met a few five-star players. Then, with the help of a private jet, Fueger traded places with Pope and Hart on Sunday and headed to Nike with Brooks.
“Cody is working hard to attract top talent to some of the most difficult places in the world to recruit,” Pope said. “So now he's approaching it from a very different angle. This is easy compared to what I was doing. Because it's Kentucky. And every day we say, “This is Kentucky.”
Even without Calipari, it still carries a lot of weight. Former star John Wall, Calipari's first big recruit in Britain, was in the Nike Circuit building Saturday. Wall spent a lot of time hugging his old coach, but he repeatedly asked to welcome Pope and his staff into the family. Even Calipari, seemingly drawn to the familiar blue hue, gravitated toward the Pope all weekend, chatting and bonding with him.
But as Calipari has often said, Kentucky isn't for everyone, and while that was true for Brooks, it wasn't for his former Baylor boss, Drew, who turned down the Wildcats before Pope was hired.
“It was very tough because Mitch is one of the great people in this profession that I met in the (2021 NCAA Tournament) bubble and I respect him a lot, but Baylor is home,” Drew said Saturday. Kentucky is Pope's home, so Drew thinks it may have been the best outcome for everyone involved. “The good thing is that he's not in our league, so we can root for him. As we all know in college basketball, Coach Pope's offense is extremely difficult to defend, and he's one of the most advanced in that area. But he also understands the importance of defense to win, and his teams are very physical, which is why they've had so much success in the Big 12 this year. I think we hired a really good coach and a really high-minded person.”
And the Kentucky faithful said in unison: “That's great, but when will we get our first five stars?”
(Photo: Kyle Tucker / The Athletic)
