The Champions Classic gives annual intel on four college hoops teams that usually matter — check out CJ Moore’s resulting film breakdown on Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State — and that means worthwhile hints on the season at large as well. This year, the Champions Classic has confirmed an enormous shift in college basketball fandom.
Hating Kentucky isn’t cool or fun anymore because Kentucky’s coach is both. Mark Pope is relentlessly likable, which means Kentucky basketball has become likable. Adjust accordingly.
Now, “cool” doesn’t work in every sense of the word, not for a 6-foot-10 guy who gives off the energy of a chemistry teacher towering over his students while delivering gentle words of encouragement. Pope is Mr. Vargas in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but with a dry-erase board and no hair.
Just as Vargas was the one teacher who could get Jeff Spicoli enthused about learning something, Pope got his thrown-together first team to figure out how to beat Duke — arguably the most talented outfit in the land — 77-72 on Tuesday in Atlanta. Pope is a former Rhodes scholarship candidate and Columbia medical student who can obviously teach as well as learn.
That might not sound cool, and in fact, his wife, Lee Anne, addressed that very word in Brendan Quinn’s profile of Pope, saying: “You know, somebody said to me, ‘He’s goofy.’ But no. He’s not goofy. He’s just — in a world where everyone is cool, he is not too cool. And there’s a big difference. He’s brilliant. He’s authentic. And he’s going to outwork everyone. I know it.”
Last night was a movie 😼 pic.twitter.com/5IbNodYT3J
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) November 13, 2024
But authenticity and perspective are cool, and they spring forth from Pope, who told Quinn that if being the coach at Kentucky is “everything you are,” you won’t succeed at it. That story centers on Pope’s relationships with his wife and four daughters, adding to a public glimpse of Pope that makes more fascinating his new job in service of the most ferociously passionate fan base in … American sports?
It adds to an interesting time for the blue bloods, too. Pope beat Jon Scheyer, who is embarking on a critical third season as the friendly, soft-spoken successor to hated (by non-Duke fans) basketball overlord Mike Krzyzewski. Non-North Carolina fans had very few nice things to say about Roy “Aw Shucks” Williams — Hubert Davis is much easier to like. Bill Self, himself an “aw shucks” purveyor extraordinaire, is the only old head left. As any non-Kansas fan will tell you, it won’t be hard to find someone less grating on the nerves than he is.
Pope, meanwhile, replaces John Calipari, which is a leap in likeability. But it would have been a parasail across the Grand Canyon a decade ago. At the rate Cal’s going, he might be a beloved underdog by the time he’s done at Arkansas. He became a bit of a sympathetic figure in recent years (for non-Kentucky fans) because of early NCAA exits with loaded teams, betrayed in part by Calipari’s failure to modernize stylistically.
Kentucky fans got angrier and angrier at him while everyone else connected better with his jokes when he wasn’t destroying the competition every night. Hey, he’s kind of cute when he loses! Now his pressers at Arkansas, where he will fade or prove he has a renaissance in him, are must-stream events. Compare that to a certain UMass presser from 30 years ago, when everyone (except UMass fans, I guess) wished John Chaney would have roughed him up a little.
When Calipari got the Kentucky job in 2009, after breaking NCAA rules at Memphis that people didn’t know existed, the prevailing sentiment in the sport was “Kentucky sold its soul.”
That’s where most of the dislike originated. Calipari was a handy rogue for all with his teams full of NBA players spending a forced year in college, when paying players was still seen as a felony and other coaches swimming in the same waters were able to “aw shucks” their way out of public scrutiny.
If you lost a recruit back then, point at the cheaters. Now there’s no bogeyman. Just you and your collective. Same thing for fans. So much energy used to be spent on which renegades were getting one over on your team and your rule-abiding coach. We’re in an era of forced introspection. And talent fees.
These are the conditions that make villains harder to manufacture. Save for the impossible-to-dislike Tubby Smith, and other than the very early Rick Pitino days when he should have upset Christian Laettner and the basketball overlord, and with all due respect to the parties Billy Gillispie used to throw, the Kentucky basketball coach is supposed to be a despised scoundrel.
Pope is not that. And that goes beyond the era we’re in, and he’s instantly a refreshing change from Calipari, even the late-stage version known as Commiserative Cal.
Pope isn’t just taking over a legendary program; he loves the place, having co-captained Pitino’s absurdly loaded 1996 national championship team. Pope clearly wasn’t Kentucky’s first — or second … or third — choice. He has to prove himself. Instant likeability points.
Word from inside the program is that he’s as lacking in self-importance as he appears to be publicly. He’s emphasizing outreach to former players. He’s honoring history, showing his team clips of legendary Duke-UK matchups stretching back to the 1970s before Tuesday’s tilt.
The fun of Pope is in the basketball itself. This roster, which was completely empty when he arrived, is not loaded with first-round picks. But it’s well-constructed. The Wildcats play a five-out system built around cutting, passing and long-range shooting. It’s a joy to watch. And to hear coached.
Did you catch ESPN’s cut-in to a Pope huddle during Tuesday’s game? The guy is down 7 to Duke in his first huge game at Kentucky, he doesn’t have anyone who can realistically guard Cooper Flagg, and he’s calmly talking fundamentals. Cheerily, even.
“We’re standing a little too much on offense, so let’s really make declarative cuts right now, OK?” Pope said to his players. “Declarative cuts.”
A sentence is the only thing that can be declarative. That declarative sentence, as Professor Pope has demonstrated for us, is inaccurate. This guy is adding to the hoops lexicon and showing how cool basketball nerd-dom can be.
And college basketball can’t help but like him. At least until he wins enough that Kentucky fans love him.
(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)