KSR - Mark Pope Full Interview 5/22/25

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Matt Jones sits down with Mark Pope to discuss his 1st season at Kentucky, his roster for the upcoming season and much more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Year one, Mark, thank you for coming on KSR. I'm so happy, man. Come on. You ready to rock? All right. Well, let's start with this. last time we talked was around this time one year ago. How has year one been better, worse, different than you expected?

How would you sort of judge your first year at Kentucky? Jeez, I don't, it's so hard to say. I mean, it's so much, right? It is, I mean, it's, I say this all the time. It's the greatest job in the world. And it's in the greatest community and the best. fan base and and I get to work with the best administration and and I love this staff so much and I this season I got to work with the greatest kids ever and and and so and it's just as nonstop it's like

it's every day and do you like that you like that it's every day I love it I mean it's part of what makes it the best job ever and so I mean it's it's there's so much actually I was talking about this with Leanne yesterday just like it's It's hard to, it's hard to, everything comes so fast. And there's so many incredible, incredible meaningful moments that you kind of think about, you want to find a break in it. So you're like, well, if you just think about to like two months ago and then trace, just the last two months, but then you cut out something right before that point that

was monumental, right? And so it's, I love it. I love being here. I love that we get to have this opportunity. I love, there's just not enough time. That's the thing that I feel over and over is there's just not enough time. We need more time. But the whole thing's exhilarating, and it's wonderful.

And we have a very clear-cut mission and a job to do that we haven't even come close to completing. And so we're just hungry chasing every day and enjoying every minute along the way. I want to kind of go back to last year, then talk about next year. I think about last year, when we were, when we sat down and talked, yeah, everything we didn't know. Like, everything was a hypothetical. Yeah. And when I talked to you there, I think I said to you in that conversation where you

and I were just sitting in your office and I said, this is going to be interesting for Kentucky fans because they don't know any of you guys. You're going to have a team where they don't know anybody. And I do remember wondering, everybody loves Mark, but how are they going to feel about these guys they don't know? And it ended up becoming one of the more beloved teams that I can remember. you knew the guys, but I was surprised how much people just embrace that group. Could they feel it?

Yeah, our guys could for sure. And I think as much as I was happy about that, I was happy that our guys didn't miss it. Because the craziest thing is, and this is almost incomprehensible to me, you could actually come here for a year as a player and miss it. Like you could miss the whole thing. If you came here, we talk to our recruits. about this all the time if you came here and you were just only dialed into yourself you could actually miss the great uniqueness and like the monstrosity that this experience can be you could actually

miss the whole thing like you might take it in in a minute here and a minute there in a crowd here and whatever but you could miss it and i felt like our guys i felt like one of the reasons why there was such a great relationship between b b bn and our players was because our players also were really engaged in growing the relationship. They were. It meant something to them. From our guys coming in, our guys logged almost 400 hours of community service,

which is just a very separate little standalone niche, but their interest in embracing the magnitude of this opportunity was pretty special. I thought part of it for the fans was the fact that they seem to really appreciate the moment to be here. The fact that they had played at schools like Drexel and Dayton and all that made it to where I felt like they were as grateful as the fans want them to be grateful. Does that make sense? And I think that's what I'm saying about not missing it. You know, I was at just yesterday I was in Brooklyn with, no, no, in the Brock, sorry, with Mo Diabate's mom. And you think about Mo, he's coming from Alabama.

Alabama was in a final four in the elite eight. It's a pretty good program. And just being, we actually walked in, he came down and met us outside the building. We walked in, and security was right there. And the kind of lead security guard was losing in mind. He's like, Coach Pope, he's like, I'm going to die hard Kentucky, you know, the whole thing. And then he knew, he knew Mo, but he didn't know about the change. And so I was like, no, you're going to be watching Mo.

We're coming here to play Michigan State this year. and he was like, wait, what? And then spending some time with Moe's family, they get it too. And it's not just the guys that were coming from a mid-major. I mean, he's coming from a really good program, but is already so ingrained to him how different this is at Kentucky than anywhere else. And he's going to come here with, and he's a beautiful, man, he's a beautiful human being, but he's going to come here and he's not going to miss it either.

like he's going to take it all into. And so I think we have the makings of another group. Hopefully it's a staple for us forever of guys that really understand what this is. Yeah, this is going to be pretty, well, it'll be a little bit of a different group. But let's get to that in a second. Before I leave last year, I want to go back to in Milwaukee. You beat Troy in the first round. Your first NCAA tournament win.

And I really, there are certain things I always am going to remember when my career is over. And I'm going to remember watching you when that game was over. You're embrace of your wife, you're embrace of your family, and then also the same thing after the Illinois game. It felt like, and maybe it'll feel like this for you in all the future tournament games you went, but it felt like that was a moment you really wanted to soak in. Am I right about that? Yeah.

It's kind of the same thing we started out talking about, was just that everything comes so fast that you could miss all the moments. Yeah. And all of us are driving so hard and it's so relentless that you could miss the moments. And so, you know, I didn't want to miss it with my guys. I didn't want to miss with my family. I didn't want to miss with the fans. You know, it's just too good to miss.

And so you only get a few seconds, but taking those few seconds really good. Yeah, that was a really cool moment just even for me to be a part of. All right. So when you came here, we were all trying to figure out, what is Mark Pope basketball? Now we have a year of it. and I'll just take on a personal level some things that surprise me, maybe we're a little different and get your take. I watched you at BYU, felt like you guys shot a zillion threes.

You ended up not shooting as many as maybe we would have thought. Why do you think that was? Poor coaching. Well, I think you won plenty, but I was really disappointed with that this year. It still eats me a little bit. I'm like, oh, I just couldn't, we couldn't quite get there. I was really proud of the project our guys put on the floor last. year and I thought with all things considered I thought I was really proud of it and we

have so much room to grow like we have so much more to do like we left so much on the table that that we weren't quite the team that I envision us being when we're great well that was injuries though right yeah part of an injury part of it coaching part of it all the things part of it newness part of it you know part of it roster construction part it was all little pieces of it And like I said, I'm super proud of what the guys did. I think it's incredible. It was a really amazing journey.

But, you know, you go to that and you're like, man, we weren't even close to what we're supposed to be, like what we're aiming to be. And I think that gives you great hope for what we can actually be. I mean, you had, look, you lose Carr right at the beginning of the year, Jackson Robinson's hurt on and off. Lamont Butler's hurt on and off. I mean, Andrew Carr's hurt on and off. I mean, you all had to deal with a lot of stuff. You had guys playing roles. You probably didn't think they were going to play immediately.

But you just kept fighting. And I felt like outside of, I thought Alabama was a tough matchup for you all. But besides that, I felt like you were matched up and in all those games. You had to feel good about that. Yeah, you know how I know that Alabama was a tough matchup? Because I was just on the road this weekend and went and sat down and Nate Oates came and sat by me. He was so happy. He was so happy to talk to me.

He was like my best friend of the whole world. That's what happens when you go 0 and 3. I think it was just tough with the rosters you had to go in those games It was complicated but you know it's it's yeah but that's all part of it it's all built into it You know we think we have some answers for when when some things go wrong this coming season like you learn and you grow and you get better right and that's what we're gonna do With all that said you know we bad you know we talked about all the continuity issues and everything else But, you know, I do think we learned a lot last year. I think we grew a lot last year as a staff.

I think we grew as a team. But dealing with the change is what we also learned was just how massively important are guys getting to know each other and love each other and trying. You know, as a basketball player, the only reason you're here is because you're completely obsessed with your own personal development and growth. You can't get to Kentucky without being like. like crazy, selfishly obsessed with yourself and how you grow. Because that's what it demands.

Like this personal sacrifice to get it's so huge. And so we're not living in Lala land where guys are going to completely divorce themselves from their own ambitions. But what we're trying to do is build a place where you're going to go achieve your own ambitions by becoming the greatest teammate ever and loving your guys more than you can possibly imagine. because this actually is, by definition, here and in the NBA. It is a team sport, and it's about a team.

And I thought that was what helped, you know, our guys being so good at doing that last year was what helped us survive all the stuff that kind of went into the season. All right, some basketball nerd stuff a little bit. You were very big on that fans wondered about the first substitution pattern. They had a lot of games where we go out, we get a leave, then you'd make a sub and people go, ah, what's he doing?

What's your philosophy on that, on that early in the first and second half, bringing in some subs? Why do you do that? Well, in the games where I brought in substitutions and it went bad, it was just bad substitution, right? Okay. But sometimes, you know,

when you're thinking about the whole nature of the game, you, you, so these are thoughts that go into it, and it's pretty much artistic. You lose the science of it really quick because there's such a small sample size, but it's, it's, It's, you know, a couple things going. So when we thought about our roster alignment about guys that actually function well together

or who we could have on the court, who we felt. You know, sometimes there's a young guy that you're trying to put on the court where you need to have them kind of protected, right? And so sometimes it's hard to take a bunch of young guys or less experienced guys and put them on the court at the same time. And so sometimes you have to grab someone out of the lineup early to get someone in so that you get someone in. So you start the rotation earlier so you don't have a bunch of guys fatiguing all at the same time and then you're doing more wholesale. Or maybe a guy when he's fresh, he's actually to be able to be more supportive than when he's hard. So you think about things like that.

You think about running through the roster to kind of see who's got a good vibe that night because there's game-to-game differentiations between. You think there are vibes game-to-game for people? I do. I think 100%. And then the other thing you're trying to explore is matchups because the vibe sometimes is really determined by the matchup about like what does it look like? And sometimes you're thinking, man, I could really function smaller in this game. Maybe I could get to smaller in this game against a particular lineup.

And so you're reactive to those things sometimes. Sometimes it's just a matter of like, hey, I'm going to take the hit now so I can be more fresh than the second half, which was really effective for us this year. You did have a lot of games where it felt like at the end you guys had some energy that the other team didn't. In just looking at your roster for next year, and granted, I have not seen these guys. play nearly as much as you have most of them. But it does look to me as an outsider like you intently went to get more athletic. Was that true?

Yeah, I think that we have positionally in some positions, I think we're way more athletic. And I think positionally in some places we're way more physical. And I think both those things matter. Was that a going through the SEC and seeing, I always say about the SEC, especially last year, even the worst teams in the SEC had great athletes. Was it like, okay, I got to ramp the athleticism up a little bit? Yeah, I think it was, again, it's always like a stew of ideas, right? One of the things that is functional for us is like positionally, if you could, you know,

like a low-hanging fruit example would be just the ability to switch one through four defensively or one-to-five defensively. So can you get either more size or more quickness or more of a steel percentage in your brain? back court and you can you get a you know a four for example that's more comfortable or actually could be a dominant defensive figure against any matchup right so you're kind of thinking about a bunch of different pieces man can we fit together and you're not going to have your whole roster to be able to do that but can we put together a lineup where that's super functional and how do we add pieces do that you know like you do that a thousand different models of your roster how it works together in terms of how you want to scheme different things on the floor as well as just kind of

looking individually at ones, two, three, source, fives, and standalones about how they function. So I see, again, as an outsider with your system, that to me, watching year one, the two positions that seem like to me are the most important for you are the point guard and the big, especially the big that's at the top with Amari. Amari is a very unique ability. So you have, I assume Brandon Garrison is what you're thinking at that role. He had some great moments, also had some inconsistent moments. I remember when you all lost him saying something to him like, all right, this offseason, you know, here you go. Are you think Brandon's ready to take that step up? Because it'll be big shoes to fill with Amari. Yeah. Well, first, you know, traditionally in my

roster, probably for most of my, you know, most of my tenure as a head coach, It's probably been the four that's been a more unique piece. We slid into this five role kind of necessity last year. And to be honest, a personnel group I had before I got to get to kind of led me to the five a little bit. It kind of changes, but a lot of time it's been a four where I'm playing a four that's an elite level ball handler, decision maker, where it gives us some space and we can protect a five a little bit. So those two pieces are interchangeable. All of that leading to Brandon Garrison.

So Brandon Garrison showed me some signs in the last month, and certainly this summer where he is just like he is growing up, man. And it's so cool to see. It's the best thing to see as a coach. But he's talking about what he wants to be. It's no longer kind of what he is and who he is and how he acts. But it's what he wants to become. You know, he's done this publicly where he's talked about Amari,

that he was, that BG was blessed to have this big brother of Mari that kind of mentored him and took care of him. He said that on our show too. Yeah. And that he kind of wants to be that guy. And it's a change now. When you start to have guys talk about what they would like to become, then you're like, oh, we got something here. And he's definitely there, man. So much of his space is that.

And we need him to be great next year. It's going to be really important because he's one of the few guys that are coming back with a ton of experience. and he's going to teach everybody on the roster. Jalen Lowe, I watched play a couple times, but I watched him a lot when they played Louisville. And I remember thinking, boy, this guy's got some talent. He's got some scoot. He can get by people, which is something I thought.

Sometimes we had a hard time doing last year, beating people off the dribble. He's also, though, he can be all over the place. How do you take that talent, which is immense, and then make it work in a system like yours? So super fun stand on him, And you've probably seen this. But so, and it's, I still haven't found a right way to say this in short words.

So give me a minute here. So Jalen Lowe was the elite levels in terms of the raw stats, points, assist. Everything else he did on the game was really good. But he wasn't a super efficient player last year. Yeah. Part of it was because he had to do a lot. It's not, it's no takeaway from Pitt. Pitt's a great program.

They do a great job. It was just the situation he was in. Yeah. And so, so one of the things he did, he was in the 90th. percentile in the country in the top 10 percent of taking the highest percentage of shots that are in the in the bottom 20 percent of shot quality. Oh, okay. That's a long analytical way of saying he took, he took, he made the game so hard or

the game that was delivered him was so harder. However that happened, like he was taking some of the, trying to make the hardest plays in the game of basketball and make him over and over and over again. Not incredibly dissimilar in some ways from Lamont Butler. So Lamont Butler's shock quality usage wasn't quite a low shot, the bottom 20% shot quality usage wasn't quite as significant when he came, but it was still a little bit of that trend. He had never been 48% from 2.

He'd never been really above 33% from 3. He comes here, he shoots 39.1% from 3 on the season, suffering half the season with a debilitating shoulder injury, and was it 56% from 2 at 8%? percentage point jump in a super senior. And so much of that was because he was humble enough and willing enough to like, let me rethink this game a little bit. So I don't spend all my time trying to get better at making possible shots,

but I actually manipulate this game and work enough to earn myself great stuff. So now instead of being in the top 10% of usage of bottom 20% shot quality shots, Now, I'm in like the top 10% of usage of like 20 to 80% quality shots, right? And that shift without improving your raw skill set can transform your entire game. And so what we love is I love seeing guys where I'm like, wow, with a little bit of study and a little bit of humility and curiosity, like we can transform your efficiency. So that's a really interesting. Because I was going to ask you, that's a money ball game. When the season is over, you have this porridge of players to choose from.

They're all over the place. And you could choose, especially at Kentucky, you could choose a lot of them. You've got a lot of choices. How do you sit there and say, Cam Williams at Tulane? That's the kid I want. Like, how do you even, how do you come to the point of saying that? Are you looking for things like that? Little inefficiencies you can take advantage of?

Yes. So you always ask yourself, what are you good at coaching? Like, what part of coaching? are you good at, right? And it changes. So it changes based on a guy's talent and based on his, but it's very much all sliding scales. Like you have 100 sliding scales.

But you're kind of like, okay, this is what happened. Now, Jalen Lowe had a terrific season last year. I mean, put up really incredible numbers. So that was the number one reason why it came out on our radar. But as you dig deeper into it, you're like, ooh, you know what? Like, we could actually take credit for him getting way better when it's. really not, it's really not that complicated. Yeah, just make better decision. And, and when you, when you think about Cam, I mean,

Cam was pretty easy for us. I think about that three kind of four spot guy that can really shoot it, really stretch the floor. But when you say it's easy for you, like I remember when he committed, I had somebody close to you today. Here's the case for him. Here's why he's awesome. But if I hadn't talked to that person, I would have seen the stats and gone, that's odd to me. So how is it that it comes to you to go, this is the dude? Well, it's a little, it's a little bit like so because we know what fits in our system we know what works you know to me just to give you like it's it's it was you know and things don't always work out the way that you think they're going to right but when we signed ansley almanor yeah same thing there was a lot of kind of question

and i and i was just like ah guys just wait just wait and see and now i i didn't i wasn't saying that he was going to have the greatest shooting season in the history of kentucky basketball that's not But what I was saying is like, no, you don't understand the way he fits into our system, the way we play, which is very much an NBA style. Like, we've had players like him that come in here and they are winning you games and you didn't anticipate it because of the skill set he brings, because it's a piece that fits so well to what we do. I had to learn about him because Mario and now we're at your pro day. Yeah. And I give him a hard time about it because I was, I was like, I looked at Anzi Almanor. I'm guilty of this.

And I went, I don't know about that, dude. Like, I trust Mark, but I don't know. And I used to joke, hey, Mario, this is your favorite player. And then I saw it once the game started. I saw what you were. So that's what you're looking for are pieces. And listen, this Cam Williams now is he's an NBA town. Yeah, he's an NBA piece.

Like, the NBA loves him. So it's not like we have some genius insight into, like, reading these guys. But I think we have a pretty clear sense of how we'd like to do things and how we'd like to function and then finding the guys that suit that really well. And Cam is one of these guys that he's going to be great wherever he goes and plays, but coming here where we're really, really going to dig in and use his skills. He's going to be special. So it's all different. So how do you find the dude from Croatia? Like, I mean, you know, he played for, by the way, he played a team.

I don't know. You probably know this. When Kentucky played in the Bahamas in, we played them. And beat about like 9,000. We played that team. How did you end up with him? In fact, I'm going to throw Mischko under the bus. So Mishko is one of the top agents in all of Europe.

And so Mishko, you know, had kind of been a party to setting up that game. And then I guess when they got to the game, there were a bunch of stipulations. Like, you guys aren't allowed to play Zoh. Oh, yeah. I do you not allowed to play so. And so he was. Not allowed to play so. He's still bitter about losing by 50 in that game.

No, I remember the not allowed to play zone, really. But I mean, you look and you go, now that we follow this guy, like, wow, how did you, he got on your radio. Yeah, so, you know, our staff does an unbelievable job scouring everywhere. And he's the guy that kind of, you know, so he's in a developmental team. Meg is a developmental team. So they play in a professional league, but they're all development. mental guys. So they bring in really young guys and just raise them up, playing them against legitimate guys. And his length was super attractive to us once we got on film and his

skill set, his ability to push the ball in transition and kind of make a decision on the floor. And then talking to him was really great. So, you know, one of the interesting things is we go through this portal season is we talk to everybody. And the reason we talk to everybody is because we actually don't know who fits Kentucky. So we actually have to have multiple conversations, not just with the player, but with the team around them, to understand if they fit here. There's so many guys that don't fit Kentucky. This place is...

Do you sometimes have to go meet them to know that? Sometimes, but we don't always have that. You know, I'm a FaceTime Zoom guy, so I almost feel like I'm even with that, though, have you had meetings where you had the FaceTime and went? Yeah, I just don't think this is for it. For 100%. Yes. So that happens.

This is a special, special place. So it happens more often than not that we're a little bit in and we're like, ah, like, you know, I might love his talent, be like, oh, he's not going to survive here. Or I might, I might love, you know, him as a kid, but think, ah, his agenda is just different than our agenda. And so, you know, that process is really important. And that was one of the, one of the really important parts of the process with Andrea, because I liked him. You know, you never know, like, we'll see how some of the skill set translates, some of the physicality translates, some of the some of all these things translate. But as we were exploring all those things, which I was so excited about all those pieces, when I started talking about on the phone, and, like, it was one particular conversation on FaceTime where I'm talking to him, and you could see him get emotional as he started to talk about the possibility of playing at the University of Kentucky. And I'm like, that's it.

this our guy, right? Because he's going to get it. He's not going to miss it. As the head coach here running this program, I cannot bring guys in here that are going to miss this. It would feel like I'm disrespecting this place that I love so much. And sometimes like uber talented guys could come here and miss this. But I think the guys are going to serve us well as a community and a commonwealth and is this incredible, you know, the flagged chip program at all college basketball are the guys that would come here and not miss it and those guys could actually hang banners for us you know you having played here you know what it means to people to have dudes from kentucky and you are going to have three on this year's team which is got to be one of the

most ryan sitting over there i mean there are not many times we've had more than three uh i'm so i'm so proud of ryan for having his shirt on still this is i'm really proud of you man that's actually super cool he's only been in here a few minutes uh but you from last year's team you had Trent Noah, you had Travis Perry. Trent's coming back. Everybody's excited. When the Travis thing doesn't work out and he ends up going, what is your, like, how's that play out?

Because you know what dudes from Kentucky mean to the fan base. I know. So this is the thing. So, you know, a bunch of things can be true at the same time. Travis, Travis Perry is special, special, special. Like, he just is, and he's a big-time basketball player. and he's going to have a big time career. He's going to be a terrific player.

And he's such a joy to coach. I mean, he just took an information and just wanted to get better. And he's got this seriousness about him that's pretty unflappable. And I just think he's got so many of the components of being a great basketball player. And I love coaching him. And that's all true. And so sometimes I get cautious about when he told me that he was leaving, we actually were having an ongoing conversation.

trying to like help him see what I saw and I you know we just just didn't get to the same place I was super it was devastating to me it's actually I get hurts my soul now just because I so you really tried to convince him oh man I just desperately want him to stay and and and and Travis Perry loves Kentucky so that's what I say I want to be sensitive like he loves Kentucky it's just he just you know he just you know you I would never want to put words in his mouth, but I think probably he was just not feeling super confident about the path for him here at Kentucky being exactly what he wanted out of the game of basketball, maybe.

I couldn't have disagreed with him more on that, but at the end of the day, we're all just making our best guess. I just know. And listen, he's going to go to Ole Miss, and he's going to have a great career there, and he's going to do it. And they're probably going to play here next year. Yeah. Yeah, and he's a terrific player, and all those things are true.

I just know that being a Kentucky basketball player is so much bigger than being a basketball player. And it's my job to help our guys see that and understand it and feel it. And, you know, sometimes as old people, it's so much easier for us to see 10 years and 20 years. and 30 years down the road than it is for young guys. And so there's not, so it just, it just, just all of that just, man, it just breaks my heart. But I'm also, I love Travis and he's going to have a great run and all those things are all true at the same time. I'm going to read you what Ryan Lemon just texted me. All right, so now I got to give you the part where we give you a hard time.

We have a little thing on the show where we talk about how much you say special and how much you say beautiful. And Ryan just said Pope throughout the trifecta special, saying Travis Perry is special, special, special, special. You love those words, beautiful and special. Don't be, don't be mad at me. I mean, I'm not mad at you because Leanne crushes me. She's like, would you stop saying beautiful? At one point, I was saying breathtaking.

She's like, stop saying breathtaking. She's like, could you please grow your lexicon so you can have some other words to say besides special and beautiful. Beautiful is a big one. You're big on beautiful. I'm actually going to put a card down here with some synonyms for my hyperbolic. You know, some people have a cuss jar. You need to have a beautiful and special jar, so they have to put a dollar in every time. Let me ask you some philosophy things about things I know Kentucky fans care about.

Let's talk about scheduling real quick. You have made, and we don't even know all the schedule yet, but it's going to be a hard schedule next year. I mean, you know, we start the Indiana series back. We got the St. John's game where they're replacing in the Champions Class. There'll be an ACC team come here. I'm rooting for Duke, although I hear it's going to be something else, which disappoints me. But that's not your control. And now you've got these two preseason games.

Purdue and today was announced Georgetown. You really believe in let's go play the best, right? I mean, this is, you guys will hear me say this until as long as I get to be here. You know, if you're coming in Kentucky, you don't come here and hide. It doesn't make sense to come here and hide. Like we're going to grow. We have some buy games where we're going to have a chance to grow. and do whatever.

But like this is, you know, if you'll let me, I spent the entire weekend and then I'm going to the SEC meetings next week and all I can talk about is we've got to expand this over 31 games. I agree. Like we have got to expand this season, guys, because what's happening is, especially with the revenue share now, like the revenue share should change everything

in terms of our opportunity to actually go share revenue, right? Let's get to, you know, I can't. keep saying 40 and everyone's mad at me. I'm going to keep pushing 40, but can we get to 35? Imagine if we had four extra games that we could put on our schedule. We could go play a big-time neutral game and set up a home-in-home and do an in-state game that people here really care about and just give us a little more flexibility in this deal.

I just think. Well, what's the downside? I mean, you used to say, like, well, you don't want to have games during Christmas break, But who cares now? I mean, at this point, like, why not? Yeah, but the thing is, those are the greatest games. And listen, you know, every kid is aspiring to go playing the league. Yeah.

So one year from now, they're going to be playing a Christmas Day game, and their whole family is going to come. You know, with NIL now, you fly your family in for the Christmas Day game. You want to be a pro. Let's be a pro, right? Yeah, I agree. Even if you keep a three-day window. Right now, they have this three-day window.

It's fine. You know, people argue about it. that people you don't have to make the season longer give us an extra week in the season that's fine we're but December you all play it's like once a week a lot of times right and we have six weeks of practice leading up to it anyway yeah extend that a little just to double down on this whole on this whole insanity you know we'll get our guys in the summer and our guys every college basketball player is making more probably than their parents right now okay and the the incredible thing is that during the summer, these guys are getting paid a significant amount of money,

and they're only allowed to work four hours a week. And the guys are dying. They're like, can we please, you know, can we please get together and get some work done? Like, the whole thing is trying outside of it, but I'm getting, I'm getting excited. No, I actually think that makes, it makes perfect sense. So all of that leads me back to like, can we please extend this season? Because, you know what, we get Purdue and Georgetown, which is awesome. in the non-conference, but come on, man, let us do a home-and-home with Kansas.

Like, let's go. Like, why am I not going to stores to play a game? Like, we should be a... You're preaching. Listen, how excited is it. We need some more flexibility to do this. And also, like, we have to, like, let us get to Maui. Now, part of the complication is that we make so much revenue off our home games that I'm

locked into this 20-game home slate. We have to do that. pay the bills for us and for the athletic department, which is good. That's a good thing. It's fine. It's great. Bring on some more flexibility so that we play some more games that every school can actually bring in some more revenue that we can share with these student athletes that we can share

with the rest of the athletic department and let's go. Well, they have some of those tournaments now where the players get revenue and I would think that's probably helpful in recruiting if you can play in them, right? And our guys do better academically. It's the time tested proven. Our guys do better academically during the season than they do out of season. So let's make the season the whole school year. Our guys will be 4.0 students.

They're all going to be academic stars. Speaking of which, I'm going to brag about this. Our guys, we were 3.5 GPA team this year. I'm super proud of our guys academically. Shout out to Michael Stone. Does everybody in BB? I think a lot of people do, yeah. Michael Stone is a legend.

If you take your mom and you multiply her by 10, that is Michael Stone. He is relentless. I mean, this guy, he is the greatest to ever do this job, man. I love him. So the only downside I've seen about your tenure is, and I hear this from Louisville fans, too. So, like, I loved at times how much Kentucky and Louisville hated each other. Cal and your old coach wanted to stab each other and still do, whether they say it or not. But you and Pat Kelsey are too nice.

Like, the Louisville fans don't hate you. We don't really hate Pat Kelsey. that's the only thing I got to get you to spice up the Louisville rivalry a little bit. I hate this Pat Kelsey and all of those Louisville fans. Hey, no! Now here's the thing. I'm going to tell you this. You know what's actually super cool?

Yeah. Is that I got a boltload of respect for Pat Kelsey. Okay? I got so much. I think what he did last year was incredible. Yes. And, I mean, two of my guys played for him last year, right? And what they accomplished in.

And, you know, I don't have a ton of interaction with the little fan base, but I'm sure they're great. But here's the thing. I actually, the one thing I would say is that I actually think, I think that this Kentucky Louisville thing is just going to get heated and heating. You know what's going to get heated? Because it's going to be back to being like one verse four in the country. Yeah, no, they're going to be good. And they have the NIL to participate. And I think that's going to be.

Yes. Yeah. Well, you get to go in there next year. You'll get a sense of, I think they're going to be cussing at you like they used to cuss at me back in the day. They would never. They would not do that. I've had some blank Matt Jones chance from the student section. So I think maybe you'll get that as well.

Okay. So going into year two, you made a statement that was like, we want to be the best in everything. And you basically said, and that included, we're going to be the, we're going to pay the most. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. I thought that was a really interesting statement. A lot of coaches want to downplay the future and kind of go, we want, you're just embracing like we're going to be the top and we're going to have to do that. It's Kentucky.

Like, you know what, guys, like, I'm not going to be the guy that comes to Kentucky as the head coach and somehow lowers the expectations of this place, man. We're trying to win this whole thing. Like, we failed at our job last year. You know, you believe that? 100%. Listen, if I know myself, for the last 30 years, I've been a. diehard Kentucky fan. If we didn't win, I'm like, what is wrong with that coach, man? He can't win in Kentucky. That's what all my guys are saying to me every single day. And so, like,

I'm not unrealistic. I understand the reality, but we're supposed to, listen, we are blessed. I'll tell you the one thing that nobody in the world will deny, okay? You can't actually argue. We have the greatest fan base in all of college basketball. There's no one, any other fan base that would argue that. Nobody can argue that. And so that fan base, deserves the best of everything. And so you go down the list. And we're trying to be the best at everything. And that's what Kentucky is supposed to be.

That's what Kentucky has traditionally been. That's what, you know, I was just with Carl Anthony Towns yesterday in New York. And that's what he expects out of this joint. And that's what Anton. So you were with Carl yesterday. Yeah. I mean, that's what all our former players, former coaches. You know what?

You know, that's what Cal expects. I mean, Cal is at their Arkansas. He's like, don't you ruin my program, man. That's the best program in the all of basketball. I wondered when you got here. Here was a worry I had, not about you as a coach, but, you know, Kentucky fans, I think, were ready for a different thing, but they do love that we have 26 guys in the NBA, and they love those guys, and they watch them, they still feel very connected.

And there was a part of me that goes, will those guys still embrace this new coach, this new era? And then I saw Andrew Harrison, who's not in the pros, but said he watched more UK games this year than he had in years past. And I've seen you, you know, talking and Devin Booker gave you a compliment and all these guys. Was that important to you to keep that bond with all those NBA guys and all those guys that played for Cal? Well, listen, I mean, guys played for Cal and they played for Tubby and played for Jobby. And so those relationships, listen, you develop a really special relationship with your head coach. Like every player does. That should never go away.

Like, I mean, I played for Coach Petino. Coach Petino is is is coaching in St. John's I'm not going to wear St. John's t-shirt, but but I love Coach Petino. I say that from the rooftops. I'll shout it from the rooftops if you know I was shouted a little quieter when he was coaching at Louisville but otherwise like I saw it. I shot it in a rooftop. Yeah. So that relationship is always going to see us, but but here's the thing. Just like we were talking about with with TP, right? I am 30 years down the road and I know what it feels like. to walk back into Rupp Arena with your family and to let your children see this place that change the trajectory of your life forever. And it means something.

It was actually super, I don't know if Carl was going to get mad at me, but I was with him yesterday, and that's what he talked about. He's actually so forward thinking that he's already thinking about legacy. And so he was talking about one day when he brings his children back to Kentucky and that they get to see because the truth is that we all stop playing and then the next guys become way cooler to our kids and then you get to walk back into the gym and you get to see this relationship that our 30 year old you know 30 years ago played in rut played in Kentucky jersey you still feel see how people embrace them and you get to walk in with your children and they get to feel that

and they get to see you in a light that they never actually saw you in their life time and that's a real thing and I know that I mean I got to play in the league as a bad player for a long time I know what it's like and so I want every single coach every single one and every single player that ever played here to feel like this is their building because they built it like we get to enjoy it right now I get to be the head coach at Kentucky enjoying this because of what cat and what Antoine and what Tony and what Kyle Macy and what Joe B, what all those guys built. That's what I get to enjoy right now. And so it's really important to me that every single person that ever wore this jersey

or walked these sidelines always feels like this is home because that's what BBN does. That's how BBN is, man. There's no fan base like it. You know, you finish, you put on this jersey and 30 years from now, whether you were the best player on the team or you're coming off the bench for two seconds at the end of the last game of the conference season, they will remember you and cherish you because you shared an experience together. Yeah, John Wall, it's crazy to me.

But it almost gets me emotional to hear John Wall talk about how excited he is about you. Like, that's a great sort of melding of time. Deb's given me the look, so I got one more question, so let me do this quickly. You went to London on Sunday. You saw that devastation down there, which I also saw on Saturday, and then we took the show on Monday. It is very hard to describe. Pictures and video don't do it justice. You were there.

I know that had to have had an effect on you. Yeah. So, I mean, man, I had so many, you know, I was only there for six hours. On Saturday, I was in Omaha and Memphis recruiting, and I called, I heard about the ports, and so I called Shep. And I was just like, you know, what, you know, and everything's happened in real time on the around. So Shepa's like, I don't know, man. We're still racing around trying to find out what's what and who's who and how we can help and who needs help. And so he texts me, I got back late that night. He texted me and said, hey, there's a place where I'm going to go tomorrow

with a few people. We're just going to try and actually just try and help one house, right, just to help one family. And so he gave me an address. And we actually, we actually got there early that morning I took a couple of my daughters and then a couple of their friends and and and we ended up parking a few hours away because there was so much stuff and we got out of the car and we actually never made it to the house we were supposed to go to because we got out of the car and I'm just say their first days but a senior couple maybe or late 70s early 80s Catherine and Jerry were outside their house there was a bunch of trees that had fallen on their roof a huge trailer that I think it had blown from the airport and flipped over right pushed against the side of the house.

It was just absolute chaos and they were outside kind of like trying to pick up stuff. And so we just stopped right there and we just started helping them. And then he grabbed a little chainsaw and he started cutting off little branch of these trees. We started taking it down. And then, you know, what was really miraculous just to give you, I'll emphasize the hopeful side of this was, it seemed like every half an hour a new group of couple. people showed up and by the time we finished you know six hours later we removed all these trees from off their house we had probably four chainsaws work and the big guns came in and we had a big

you know kind of a forklift that came and it was helping to live trees and and and there was a family that was really special to me from paduca that that had just they had just come and parked and walked into the front yard after us and I was like do you guys know the family where he's like now we were in Paducah when things were really tough four or five years ago people came help us so we heard about us we got in the car and we drove out here and we're like we're going to like we're going to pay it pay it forward right kind of thing and he was just like and then when we we left we're trying to drive out and I kid you not there was a like a it was a it was a parking lot for like a mile with people coming into town trying to help and we drove

by a gas station there's two people out there with signs that are like, they just had signs scribbled, the magic marker free food. So, you know, you're just inviting people to come, stop by, and if they need some food. And the point is, like, there's so much work to be done. And it's like, you know, all of us that go in, you know, like we went in the first day. And so that's all great. But they're going to be fighting this for the next years, right? And so the continuity of help and care for this community is really important.

But it was, I'm telling you, it's Kentucky. it's Kentucky man the same vibe that we have in BBN where there's this it's just this connection point like people in the state from my vantage point like we are great at loving our neighbor like people love their neighbors man and that's a to me that's a gospel principle that's so important but it's something that we see lived out in the lives of people here and and Kentucky's had way more than the fair share of natural disaster over the last couple years but it was inspiring to see and I saw you guys down there And I and you know what

I'll give you a little sad of hair Because I think it's so cool So you know I know you guys I think you were on air live there But I saw some social media stories that you guys did Where people were telling their story And I want to expand this Just as this connection point

So I had some guys coming to my office Like a month ago I haven't had a chance to tell you this And they this gentleman Incredible artist Just an amateur artist He got a real job but he's just he just and so he did this incredible painting from the from the press conference a year ago yeah and he brought to the office and this was what was super cool so it was him and he brought

his four buddies and they're my age they're 50 right and and it kind of gave me this gift so we're sitting down talking in the office and so we got at this point where they're like oh man we just you know when i get up in the morning the first thing i do is like what's how you know what's going on new and then then I'm listening to the KSR, you know, while I'm working. And then, you know, I get home and after dinner, I'll go check to see, you know, what else has happened with the cats and the whole thing. And it's this connection point.

The same thing we're talking about that you guys do an incredible job providing is, is, and I say this all the time, it doesn't really matter if you say something bad about me or good about me or bad about the cats or good about the cats. What matters is that there's all these people, coming to the well. So I got to, I've been, I had a chance to go to Africa so many times and do some service trips there. And in these communities, the well in these villages, the well is where you always find

people. Because everybody is constantly throughout the day. You have to go, you have to leave your hut and you walk across the village and you go to the well to collect waters happen all throughout the day. And so the well is a special place because it's where everybody gathers and everybody interacts and you guys do an unbelievable job and i thought it was so special that you guys went down there and and just like brought the well there to where everybody can see that's super cool man i appreciate you doing that well i want to thank you i'll let you go but i want to say this set with you a year ago

and i told you that before you'd gotten hired i was kind of like you know what i might be done with this and you said to me and at that point i decided to stay yeah but you said to me you like beg me to don't go i was like you don't have to beg me, I'm going to do it. But you have, this is the fan mat talking, not the radio host, you have rejuvenated the love part of this. People always love the basketball. People always wanted to win, all that. But you have rejuvenated the thing where there's a pride, there's a self-esteem that comes with being a part of it, and there's that collectiveness in a state that's had a lot of difficulties historically, but especially in the last few years. This is,

is that center point. And I've watched people who had kind of gone, you know, I don't know if college sports are for me anymore. And you brought all that back. And those players brought that back. And that is a really special thing. So just as somebody who talks to the fan base, thank you for that. Because there's a lot of people who said to me, last year was one of my favorite years being a Kentucky fan. And I think we'll look back at last year the way we look back at some of those early Rick teams, the John Walden Marcus Cousins Cow team, like the, you got everybody back. And I think that's awesome.

So let's run it back this year. I think we got a chance, man. I think we're going to fall in love with this team. And I think these guys, you know, the DNA of this team, by definition, we have a crew of guys that are like hungry to compete. We don't have anybody that's run away from it. Like everybody that's on this roster is hungry to come compete. I think they all get Kentucky and they're excited to embrace it.

I think this is going to be a fun ride, man. I can't wait to take it with you. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. Okay, let's go. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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