According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, Pope will earn $5.5 million per season, before incentives.
Pope played two seasons at Kentucky from 1994-96 under Rick Pitino, winning a national title in 1996, and now joins Joe B. Hall as the only coaches to go on to coach the men’s team after playing for the program. That’s a positive on Pope’s résumé as he takes over a blue blood.
His history as a coach makes the hire quite a surprise.
Pope has worked as a head coach since 2015 at BYU and Utah Valley. With the Cougars, he has posted a 110-52 record in five seasons, with two NCAA tournament berths. His teams failed to win a game in both appearances, getting upset as a No. 6 seed in the first round of both.
Kentucky has advanced out of the first round of the NCAA tournament only once since 2019 after a run of dominance during John Calipari’s first 10 seasons in Lexington.
It was an interesting road to get to Pope for Kentucky. At least four current and former head coaches said they weren’t interested or turned down the chance to take over the job following Calipari’s departure to Arkansas. Those four were UConn’s Dan Hurley, Alabama’s Nate Oats, Baylor’s Scott Drew and former Villanova coach Jay Wright.
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