By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
The landscape of college athletics isn’t the same as the turf Mark Pope tread during his career at Kentucky.
Despite the addition of Name, Image and Likeness and revenue sharing, Pope savors unfamiliar territory as he enters his second season as coach of the Wildcats.
“To be a coach in college basketball right now, and have the opportunity to navigate this insanity, is actually the coolest thing ever,” Pope told Matt Norlander earlier this week. “It’s incredibly challenging. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be a coach.”
Pope touched on a variety of subjects during his segment with Norlander and the Kentucky coach expects Croatian forward Andrija Jelavic to arrive on campus ahead of the fall semester.
“We’re hoping to get him on campus by the end of this week,” Pope said. “We have high, high hopes for him.”
Jelavic, 21, is a 6-foot-11 forward and will wear No. 4 this upcoming season. He averaged 11 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 1.0 steals per game for KK Mega Superbet (Serbia) in the Adriatic League last year.
40 in the future
Although the NCAA recently voted against NCAA Tournament expansion, Pope is hopeful a 40-game regular-season, instead of the current 32-game format, can be achieved in the future.
“One, our guys do better academically during the season than they do out of the season,” Pope said. “Two, when our guys go on to the NBA, they’ve played a 31-game season. This was my experience: When I got to the All-Star break my first year in the league, I felt like I’d played two seasons already and I still had 60 games left to play, so I’m not sure it’s a great prep for the NBA.”
He added that he would be in favor of making changes to the transfer portal, especially the timing of the opening and closing of the portal window.
“If I could change it, I would probably move it to the day after the national championship game and make it a really tight window, make it a five-day window,” he said. “That way, everyone’s had time to evaluate, everyone’s had time to see, and just make it a shorter window so we could get through the process.”
In addition, Pope added that the process doesn’t have an immediate and easy answer.
“The process is already crazy-fast. But I say that also acknowledging that answer (moving the window) raises a lot of issues, too. There’s no perfect answer. The main thing should still be the main thing, and the main thing is giving these kids an unfettered opportunity to go be a champion.
“I still believe that’s where these kids get the greatest experience of their life that they’ll never forget, is pursuing a championship with their whole hearts.”
Looking back
Looking back at his first season at Kentucky, Pope said the toughest loss was an 85-65 setback to Ohio State four days before Christmas at Madison Square Garden.
“The Ohio State loss was so painful because it was in Madison Square Garden. It was probably our poorest performance of the season, credit to them,” Pope told Norlander. “But that building — to rub it in, that building is probably the second-most special building to me in the world. The fact that we performed so poorly in that building, in that city, was really hard.”
The team’s eight wins against Top 15 opponents last season included a 77-72 win over Duke in November, a victory Pope says helped set the tone for the rest of the year.
“For my guys to get a chance to go prove that they were not just mid-major super-senior guys, but that they were legitimately here to become a part of this incredible Kentucky legacy of these great teams throughout the generations, I think that was really important,” he said. “I think that was really important.”