Mark Pope won a national championship when he was a Kentucky basketball player. He now returns to Lexington as the Wildcats‘ head coach.
Mark Pope is returning to Kentucky. The former college basketball player, who was the captain of the Wildcats‘ 1996 national championship team, has been named the basketball program’s new head coach.
Pope replaces John Calipari, who recently departed Lexington to take the head coaching job at Arkansas. The school announced Pope’s hiring in a release Friday morning but stopped short of revealing the terms of his contract. Pope’s introductory press conference is scheduled for Sunday at Rupp Arena.
Calipari guided Kentucky to its eighth NCAA championship in 2012. He also coached the Wildcats to four Final Four appearances in 15 years. But Kentucky hasn’t returned there since going 38-1 in 2015. Calipari said he had decided to step down once he had realized that the basketball program was in need of „another voice.“
„The last few weeks, we’ve come to realize that this program probably needs to hear another voice, that the university as a whole has to have another voice giving guidance about this program that they hear, and the fans need to hear another voice. We’ve loved it here, but we think it’s time for us to step away and step away completely from the program.
