Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope on new UK transfers, freshmen
From incoming freshmen to seasoned players from the portal, UK basketball coach Mark Pope breaks down each new player on his 2025 squad.
Kentucky basketball, under coach Mark Pope, featured one of the nation’s top offenses last season.Opponents found Pope’s five-out offensive scheme, which emphasizes spacing and shooting, difficult to defend.Texas leaned on its experience from a 2024 matchup against BYU, the program Pope led prior to taking over UK.Tennessee and Alabama each faced Kentucky three times, with varying degrees of success against the high-powered offense.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — Stifling Kentucky basketball‘s magnetic offense was one of the toughest tasks in the sport last season. The Wildcats, under the direction of then-first-year coach Mark Pope, averaged 84.4 points per game, which ranked seventh in Division I, and No. 3 among SEC teams.
One opponent that slowed down UK, however, was Texas. The Longhorns downed the Wildcats, 82-78, in Austin, Texas, in the middle of February. Kentucky had one of its worst shooting performances of the 2024-25 campaign in the loss, making 41.9% (26 for 62) of its attempts.
But UT had an advantage few foes could claim: It already was familiar with Pope’s five-out offense, having faced his BYU club in 2023-24.
“We went back and watched some things (BYU) did,” Texas guard Chendall Weaver told The Courier Journal at SEC Tipoff in Birmingham, Alabama, in October. “And then we had some other things to scout.”
That knowledge paid off with a four-point win.
“They’re going to have the ball moving, going to put it in the post,” Weaver said. “They’re a great offensive team. … So, you can’t come out sluggish getting out to shooters.”
Tennessee faced Kentucky three times last season.
The Cats swept both portions of the home-and-home series during the regular season. But the Volunteers got their revenge in the NCAA Tournament, ending their border-state rival’s season in the Sweet 16.
“With their zoom action, what they like to run, last year they had a player that was unique, that could bring it down the floor, which you don’t see many post players do that,” said Tennessee coach Rick Barnes, alluding to Kentucky center Amari Williams, who frequently started fast breaks during the 2024-25 campaign. “I think Mark has done a great job getting guys to play the way he wants them to play. Is it a different style? There’s a lot of teams that have gone to that spread set like that. … You have to be able to adjust game to game. That’s where I think we have an experienced team; they’re able to do that a little bit quicker.
“The fact is, everything he does, it’s difficult to guard.”
Vols forward Felix Okpara remembers it all too well.
“It was tough, because we know they wanna play fast, want to shoot the ball and (we wanted to) be able to stay in front of guys and not lose our man,” he said. “I think that’s what got us the first two games: We were just losing our man a lot, and they had a bunch of open 3s. They definitely want to shoot 3s, get a lot of offensive rebounds, kick out and keep shooting.”
Alabama also squared off with Kentucky three times in 2024-25. But the Crimson Tide always ended on the right side of the scoreboard, winning all three meetings.
Labaron Philon, an SEC All-Freshman Team selection for Alabama last season, chalked up the success to coach Nate Oats.
“Coach Oats really knows what he’s doing,” Philon said. “Coaching and preparing. They say it’s hard to beat a team twice; three times is really, really hard. So each game, we had to focus.”
Few in attendance at the conference media days event had more effusive praise for Pope’s crew than Ole Miss forward Malik Dia.
“It’s a big-time offense that helps each and every player in that offense thrive,” Dia said. “Scouting for it was hard, just because they set a lot of screens, slips — there’s multiple tricky actions. They have a lot of their guys involved in it. Being able to have five guys who can space out and shoot is big. That’s why Kentucky is the brand (it is). It’s hard to play against them.”
Not so for the Rebels last season. They led by 27 early in the second half before earning a 98-84 home victory in a game in which Williams posted only the fourth triple-double in UK history.
“We were ready to play that day,” Dia admitted.
Yet before Pope arrived in the league, there already was another coach who had made a 3-point-centric attack his calling card: Oats, the same man who went 3 for 3 versus the Cats last season.
Oats said he didn’t want “to take credit for changing” how SEC offenses operate. It’s just the nature of the game.
“College basketball teams try to copy what’s been working,” he said. “What we’ve done has worked, in a sense, from year to year. We’ve been pretty good year to year. Only team in the country the last two years (that has been) top five in offensive efficiency, too.
“I think what we’re doing works on offense with the right personnel. I will say some teams I’ve seen try to go a little bit more five-out (and) fast, it doesn’t work. Maybe they don’t have the right personnel. (Then) they revert back to what they’re more comfortable with. You have to have the right personnel to do it.”
Pope believes his 2025-26 roster is perfectly constructed to accomplish an oft-repeated goal: launching at least 30 triples per game.
“We might be able to approach that number because I think we’re going to be capable of having more pace in this game,” Pope said. “It’s always going to be important how we play. The way we fundamentally approach this game is all about gravity. Everything we think about in this game is, ‘How do we treat gravity?’
“You achieve gravity with space — great cutting, smart cutting, intelligent cutting, where you bring bodies together. Then you create vacuums.”
And 3-pointers play a key role in generating the “gravity” he seeks.
“Listen, there’s nobody in the world more proud that last year’s team made more 3s than any team in the history of Kentucky basketball,” Pope said. “I would like to run that back times two this year. I think we have a group that can do it.
“This group might not have come in with the reputation as being as prolific 3-point shooters as some of the guys we brought in last year. The progress they made every single week during the summer was remarkable. We have some guys that are shooting the ball at such an elite level right now, it’s pretty inspiring.”
That’s not all: the 30-attempt threshold might just be the starting point.
“We will continue to push that number,” Pope said, “as high as we can.”
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.