This offseason was a wild one throughout school basketball, as quite a few high-major coaches modified their plans for the 2024-25 season.
The Kentucky Wildcats have been on the heart of the most important transfer that noticed John Calipari go away for Arkansas. Then, after courting Dan Hurley and Scott Drew, the Cats landed Mark Pope to guide this system into the brand new period of Kentucky Basketball.
It began off with a bang because the BBN packed out Rupp Enviornment for his introductory press convention, however now issues are in a holding sample because the fanbase waits to see the crew take the ground. He additionally bought some constructive opinions from a few of his friends.
On this 12 months’s version of Candid Coaches by CBS, Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander discuss with coaches across the nation and get their opinions on completely different matters all in alternate for anonymity. This week they launched a ballot and a few quotes concerning the next query; Who was the very best high-major teaching rent of 2024?
Pope landed in third touchdown 8.5% of the vote trailing Calipari (43.4%) and Dusty Might (21.7%).
Additionally they have a number of coaches to offer quotes on the Pope rent.
“He’s not a man that’s on the lookout for a microphone each 10 minutes to state his case. He doesn’t make a number of excuses. Basketball is what drives him,” says one coach. “Underrated recruiter, superb expertise evaluator and is aware of learn how to keep forward of the curve offensively and be not possible to protect in house. Makes use of his personnel like a surgeon. Everybody on the ground is admittedly good at one thing, they usually’ll purchase into that position.”
That adopted with this one;
“I do know this isn’t the man Kentucky followers thought they have been going to interchange Cal with — however he’s already received them over. He’ll be tremendous there. And he actually is a superb offensive coach. So not solely will he be good there, however they’ll be enjoyable to observe. He won’t dominate the recruiting rankings like Cal did as a result of numerous colleges are utilizing NIL. However he’ll get good gamers and win massive.”
Let’s hope that the final sentence from that coach comes true.
The rankings appear about proper, as you could have a Corridor-of-Fame coach main the best way and a coach that made a Cinderella run to the Last 4, taking second place. There are nonetheless a number of query marks, however coaches across the nation appear to imagine Pope goes to achieve success.
Shaping as much as be a enjoyable 12 months.
