ST. LOUIS — Mark Pope spent the final minutes of Kentucky’s season with his arms crossed, watching quietly Sunday afternoon as the most expensive roster in the history of college basketball exited in the second round of the NCAA Tournament without much of a fight.
Pope walked off the floor by himself following the 82-63 loss against second-seeded Iowa State until a staffer darted in front of him to hand him a box score. Pope folded it in half down the middle to hide its contents. There was no need to look; Pope knew the story it told.
His second season at Kentucky never went according to plan, with two of his biggest investments — sophomore center Jayden Quaintance and senior point guard Jaland Lowe — playing only three games together and neither seeing the floor from mid-January on. Kentucky was also without Acaden Lewis, the original backup plan at point guard who de-committed last spring and ended up at Villanova. That will be the asterisk that Pope can place on the 2025-26 season.
“We were disappointed that we never got to run with the roster that we thought we had,” Pope said.
Pope had good intentions when he set out to build that roster last spring. He won over the fan base in his first year with a team that ran beautiful offense and played together, but ultimately wasn’t good enough, particularly on the defensive end, to compete for a national championship.
Kentucky spent a reported $22 million dollars to fix that. Pope didn’t run from that number in the preseason; he embraced it. Almost flaunted it. He wanted to have the most and spend the most.
But he’s spent the past few months backpedaling, pushing against Kentucky’s salary pool — “we’ve heard so many numbers go around” — and even lecturing the media this past week when he was asked if Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg’s claim that Kentucky was ready to spend $7 million-$9 million to land him was true.
“If I was going to tell you the percent of stuff that was actually reported accurately,” Pope said Thursday, ahead of UK’s dramatic overtime win over Santa Clara in the first round, “it would probably be in the fifth percentile.”
But if there was ever a time to celebrate Kentucky’s willingness to have the most and spend the most, this was it. Pope should have said that Kentucky wanted Lendeborg, and the process, while unsuccessful, was the right one. Lendeborg has been one of the best players in college basketball, making top-seeded Michigan one of the national title favorites.
Pope could have said that Kentucky will continue to aggressively pursue the best players. Because what Kentucky did instead was borderline reckless.
If you’re going to spend what Kentucky spent, you better be landing no-doubt NBA players. Several of them. That’s what it takes to compete for national titles. Kentucky has two players expected to play in the NBA next year: Quaintance, who was a risky signing because he had surgery on March 19 last year to repair a torn ACL and ended up playing only four games, and Otega Oweh, projected to go No. 58.
The belief around college basketball was that Kentucky spent last spring just to spend, outbidding itself for players and shelling out salaries that were way beyond how many of its players were valued on the open market.
Otega Oweh hit a buzzer-beater Friday that led to a Kentucky win in overtime. But the Wildcats were no match for Iowa State on Sunday. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
Iowa State was missing its best player Sunday in forward Joshua Jefferson and still appeared to have a talent advantage. Iowa State, which spent significantly less than seventh-seeded Kentucky, was the perfect picture of how to win in this era. The Cyclones invested in retention, using a majority of their name, image and likeness dollars on their big three — Jefferson, Milan Momcilovic and Tamin Lipsey — and moneyballed the rest, identifying players who fit the system and would play with the kind of effort that coach T.J. Otzelberger demands.
Pope tried to buy effort.
His response to his first UK team’s defensive struggles was to recruit hard-playing athletes like Mouhamed Dioubate and Denzel Aberdeen who could guard. Pope banked on his ability to always build efficient offenses and overcome any skill set limitations the new players had.
Early in the season, Kentucky’s offense sputtered and the defensive effort wasn’t there. Eventually, the Cats tried harder, and Pope deserves credit for salvaging a potential nightmare early. Kentucky started 5-4, and it could have gotten a lot worse.
But Sunday was a reminder that these players just didn’t fit him. Early on, after ball movement led to an open 3 by Collin Chandler, Pope turned to his bench with a big smile and a fist pump. “We’re moving the ball,” he said. “We’re moving the ball.”
This is what brings him joy. Pope loves shooting. Loves spacing. Loves beautiful offense. Loves unselfish play. Two years ago, when he was still at BYU, the Cougars carved up the same Iowa State defense with ball movement (21 assists to just 11 turnovers) and floor spacing (13 of 35 3s), which opened up the inside to help the Cougars make 14 of 22 2s.
The ball movement didn’t last long on Sunday, as a 20-9 lead for the Cats quickly disappeared with an 11-0 Iowa State run.
“We can’t move the ball,” Pope told his assistants. “Can’t dribble. We’ve got to pass it.”
Kentucky would end up with 20 turnovers and just 11 assists. Too much one-on-one. Too much panicking. Not enough skill to make Iowa State pay for almost always trying to put two on the ball.
Eventually, the lack of offensive success led to a defeated defensive effort.
And on the other sideline, Iowa State, even without its star, looked a lot like what Pope had envisioned for his team.
“We thought we were going to have depth and physicality and size,” Pope said. “And we felt like we were going to be able to come wave after wave after wave.”
Instead, the Wildcats didn’t quite drown in expectations. But they far from lived up to what was expected for that price tag.
Ideally, Pope will be able to get to an approach that blends what John Calipari used to do in Lexington and his year-one approach when he landed players who fit him. Cal could deliver and identify stars, and for all his faults, he rarely missed when he swung big in recruiting.
Pope should get a mulligan, even if most with a realistic eye would question whether, at full strength, this was actually a team that could compete for championships. His job is not in jeopardy yet, but in this era, when you spend and do not win at the level that’s expected, donors will give for only so long. Eventually, they’ll hit pause, and the way to get them to give again is to change coaches.
The honeymoon is over. And soon Pope will be held to his words that at Kentucky, the expectations are to have the best of everything.
“This is the greatest place in the world to play basketball,” he said Sunday, which marked six straight tournaments without UK playing in the Elite Eight, the longest drought in school history.
“It comes with all of the stuff. It comes with all the pressure and the scrutiny. These guys won games in the NCAA Tournament back-to-back years, and at any other school, that would be good, and at Kentucky, the uniqueness of Kentucky, that’s not the answer.”
You can spend your way to the right answers. You’d better just not keep missing.