Mark Pope is trying to bring a fun style of basketball to Lexington.
The 1996 University of Kentucky national champion returns to the Wildcats as the program's new head coach, leaving his old job at BYU where he held the past five seasons. I understand his concerns about his resume, but But what we know for sure is that his offense will excite the fan base. Remember how much fun it was to watch the 2023-24 Wildcats shoot a ton of 3-pointers and play with space? Expect the same from Pope in Lexington.
Jordan Sperber, also known as hoopvision68, is a highly regarded basketball mind who served as an analytics and video specialist at the Division I level. His breakdown videos on YouTube (114,000 subscribers) generate hundreds of thousands of views. Back in February, Sperber focused on Mark Pope and the BYU Cougars. why? Because he was fascinated by Pope's attack (He even suggested Michigan State hire Pope last month.).
To summarize Sperber's thoughts, Pope is focused on hitting threes and leveraging his playmaking big man to open up cutters inside the arc. BYU made more triples (1,087) than two-pointers (1,068) last season, becoming just the fourth high-major team in history to do so. In the breakdown below, Sperber takes a deeper dive into Pope's offense. A must-see for Kentucky fans.
