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PROVO — BYU men's basketball coach Mark Pope is the leading candidate to become the next head coach at Kentucky, multiple outlets reported Thursday night.
The deal for the fifth-year coach at BYU is expected be completed "in the near future," according to ESPN's Pete Thamel, and could be "done by the end of the night," per CBS Sports' Matt Norlander.
Pope is 110-52 as a head coach in five seasons at BYU, including a 23-11 mark and a fifth-place finish last year in the Cougars' first season in the Big 12 with a second NCAA Tournament bid in four seasons. The 51-year-old coach also went 77-56 in four seasons at Utah Valley.
The offer on the table is a five-year deal worth an average of $5.5 million annually, according to Norlander.
Pope would replace John Calipari, the Hall-of-Fame hoops coach who left Kentucky after 15 seasons to take the same job at Arkansas. Calipari, who signed a five-year contract with a $7 million annual salary, led the Wildcats to a 410-122 record in his time in Lexington, including four Final Four appearances and the 2012 national championship.
But he exited with just one NCAA Tournament win in the past five seasons (including the canceled 2020 tournament due to the COVID-19 pandemic) that included losses to Saint Peter's and Oakland.
Pope is a Kentucky alum who played for legendary coach Rick Pitino in Lexington, helping the Wildcats win the 1996 NCAA title before a decade-long career in the NBA and overseas.
After a career that started at Washington as Pac-10 freshman of the year, the Omaha, Nebraska, native who grew up in Bellevue, Washington, went on to become a second-round NBA draft pick of the Indiana Pacers before retiring following the 2005 season and opting for medical school at Columbia.
But in 2009, the former power forward opted to return to the hardwood over surgical rotations, joining Mark Fox's coaching staff at Georgia as director of basketball operations.
Following two years with the Bulldogs and at Wake Forest, Pope joined Dave Rose's staff at BYU in 2011, helping the Cougars to four consecutive 20-win campaigns and three NCAA Tournament appearances before being named Utah Valley's head coach in 2015.
He returned to Provo in 2019 upon Rose's retirement following 19 seasons at BYU, immediately leading the Cougars to a 24-8 record that included a 13-3 mark in the West Coast Conference in 2019-20 (and likely an NCAA Tournament berth, if the tournament had not been cancelled).
Mark Pope might be great at Kentucky. (Any competent coach should be great at Kentucky.) But I explained a few hours ago on the @EyeOnCBBPodcast why I would've aggressively pursued Billy Donovan, and the idea that UK reportedly didn't at all is pretty wild. pic.twitter.com/TY06ANms2L
— Gary Parrish (@GaryParrishCBS) April 12, 2024
It all led to interest from Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart — especially after top candidates such as UConn's Dan Hurley, Alabama's Nate Oats and former Villanova coach-turned-CBS-analyst Jay Wright took their name out of the running before Calipari had formally signed on with Arkansas.
When Baylor coach Scott Drew declared his allegiance to the Bears after his family had taken a private charter flight to Kentucky the night before, the Wildcats moved swiftly toward their next round of targets.
Apparently, that included Pope — even as Barnhart did not "aggressively pursue" Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan "at any point over the past four days," according to Norlander.
The veteran college basketball scribe added that no contact was made with Rick Pitino, the former national championship-winning head coach at Kentucky who is currently at St. John's.
Pope's departure is the second in a week for the BYU men's basketball program after assistant coach Kahil Fennell left to take the UTRGV job.
He's also the second Division I men's basketball coach to leave an in-state school this season after Danny Sprinkle moved to Washington following just one year at Utah State.
