Kentucky coach Mark Pope is the talk of college basketball after his Wildcats were blown out 94-59 by the No. 8 Gonzaga Bulldogs on Friday evening. The loss represented the Wildcats’ fourth loss of the season, dropping them to 5-4 and sending them tumbling out of the AP Poll Top 25.
Pope and his team were booed by Kentucky fans at Bridgestone Arena during and after the game against Gonzaga, putting the coach in the hot seat according to some analysts and fans.
Kentucky Fans Call for Bruce Pearl Amid Mark Pope Woes
Kentucky’s loss to Gonzaga sparked widespread discourse. On Sunday, former Auburn Tigers coach Bruce Pearl, who retired before the season began, waded into the discussion on X after a graphic compared Pope’s first 45 games in charge to those of John Calipari.
“Interesting perspective! Cal’s teams always played hard and usually great on D. Mark runs great stuff, they just can’t shoot, are soft inside and banged up. In coaching, when you winning they afraid you going to leave and when you losing, they packin your bags @TNTSportsUS,” Pearl tweeted.
Kentucky fans on X enthusiastically called for Pearl to take the Kentucky job to help the Wildcats out of their current predicament.
“SAVE US COACH. KENTUCKY NEEDS YOU,” one fan tweeted, calling for help from Pearl.
“Bruce, if Pope doesn’t survive, you’re welcome in Lexington,” another fan tweeted, asking Pearl to replace Pope whenever he gets the chance to.
“If Kentucky doesn’t offer you the job now, they are retarded more than I thought,” one fan tweeted, taking a dig at the university’s sanity if they do not make the coaching decision soon.
“Are you interested in coming out of retirement and saving us???” Another fan begged Pearl to come out of retirement to help Kentucky bounce back.
“Come to Lexington coach. We have been wanting you here since the Tennessee days,” one fan wrote, telling the coach how long they have wanted him to join the team.
After succeeding Calipari as coach of the Wildcats last season, Pope led Kentucky to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament alongside a respectable 29-16Â record. Afterward, he reportedly spent a mammoth $22 million to stock his roster, leading to heightened expectations this season.
Pope Confident of Repairing Kentucky’s Issues
During Monday’s segment of the “Mark Pope Show,” the Kentucky coach expressed confidence that his players could turn around the team’s disappointing performances this season.
“It’s hard right now, and we’re reconsidering everything,” Pope said. “It’s not where you want to be at this point of the season, where you’re trying to rethink everything you do. There’s a lot of things that we know we can get done. We have the right guys to do this.”
He further added, “We just for a number of reasons, we just haven’t yet, and so it’s going to take everything. It’s going to take all the criticism and all the truth-telling and all the encouragement. We’re not now, but we’re going to be a really good team.”
The Wildcats’ schedule gets even harder, with two clashes against the Indiana Hoosiers and No. 22 St. John’s Red Storm still to come, before a road game against the No. 12 Alabama Crimson Tide to open SEC conference play.
