Mark Pope is looking for UK basketball recruits. Here’s what’s ‘super important’ to him.
Coach Mark Pope’s first roster of Kentucky Wildcats is entering week five of summer practice, the halfway mark of their earliest preparations for the 2024-25 college basketball season.
And while those workouts will remain top of mind for Pope and his UK coaching staff, some of their attention will be elsewhere this month.
July remains the busiest time for offseason recruiting, with three separate evaluation periods spread over nine days as the shoe company circuits wrap up their grassroots campaigns and other major events pepper the schedule.
The first July eval period was actually last week, and the Kentucky staff tipped things off Thursday with plenty of travel — Pope and Jason Hart scouting Adidas players in South Carolina, associate head coach Alvin Brooks III in Phoenix for an event, and Cody Fueger checking in on some international talent at an Atlanta showcase.
The second eval period of the month starts Friday, and it might be the biggest. This weekend will feature the final games of Nike’s Peach Jam — the sport’s premier shoe company league — as well as major events from Adidas and Under Armour.
The Wildcats have about a dozen scholarship offers out to prospects in the 2025 class, and this week on the calendar has traditionally been a pivotal one for getting final looks at top stars before their senior years of high school begin.
For Pope and company, it will be an especially intriguing time.
Of the 12 scholarship players on Kentucky’s roster for the 2024-25 season, seven are entering their final year of NCAA eligibility. That means Pope will have at least seven spots to fill next offseason, and while some of those additions will undoubtedly come from the transfer portal, UK is looking for an infusion of talent from the high school ranks.
This won’t be Pope’s first look at those elite 2025 recruits as UK’s coach. There was one major evaluation period in May — about a month after he took the Kentucky job — and some other big events in June, as well as a couple of international trips to scout American and overseas talent.
But July often acts as a sorting period for top prospects and the coaches recruiting them. Some have already started to whittle their list of options. Others will follow in the coming weeks.
So what, exactly, will Pope and his assistant coaches be looking for this month?
“Guys that can shoot the basketball — that’s really important,” Fueger told the Herald-Leader recently. “Guys that are skilled. Those are two things that are super important to Coach. And then, obviously, you look at everything from all their percentages. And every position is a little bit different — what we’re looking for in bigs and guards and all of that. But being able to shoot and being skilled are things that are super important to us.”
That’s one departure from the previous era of Kentucky basketball, when John Calipari often prioritized length and athleticism on the recruiting trail.
Obviously, Calipari wanted skilled guys who could shoot, too — and he landed plenty of them — but, generally speaking, those weren’t the top two traits that came to mind when thinking of the prototypical UK recruit of the past 15 years.
Calipari’s final Kentucky team led the country in 3-point shooting, thanks largely to his last three UK draft picks — Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham and Antonio Reeves — but ending up anywhere near the top of the national lists in 3-point stats was an outlier for his tenure.
Pope’s offense — with Fueger instrumental in running the show — will be predicated on fast play, getting up lots of 3-point shots and making the right reads on and off the ball. And fitting into such a system will, in some cases, warrant a different recruiting profile than the one that typically attracted Calipari.
Kentucky-first recruits?
Without naming names, Pope also drew a clear distinction between himself and his predecessor during his introductory press conference in Rupp Arena back in April.
“I understand the assignment,” Pope said then, referring to the expectation of winning championships above all else — a veiled reference to Calipari’s constant focus of turning UK recruits into NBA draft picks as quickly as possible, with the on-court results during their brief stays in college basketball often seeming secondary to the ultimate goal of turning pro.
That’s a fine line to walk on the recruiting trail. The players Pope is pursuing — most of them five-star prospects, many of them ranked in the top 10 nationally — obviously want to be playing in the NBA soon, too.
But Pope spoke of the importance of the front of the jersey during that April introduction, and he’s continued to keep the focus on the program’s drive for a ninth national championship in the time since.
That’s clearly trickled down to his coaching staff and players.
“He definitely does pass it along,” UK junior guard Otega Oweh said last week of the “understand the assignment” motto. “But, on top of that, every day that we come in here, we see the banners in the practice arena. So, on top of him saying it, we also have to live and we see it every single day that we come in here. So, I mean, it’s a rich history that we have to play for.”
Otega paused briefly.
“And we’re excited to go out there and complete the ninth assignment,” he added with a grin.
As the UK newcomer said, the walls of the Joe Craft Center — where the team practices — are adorned with banners commemorating each of the program’s eight national titles. Under Calipari, those same walls also featured giant poster cards for each of his former players in the NBA. Those player cards are gone.
The Herald-Leader was told this summer that their absence was a simple matter of the posters being difficult to keep up to date — with so many players in the league and so much roster movement among them — and that officials were looking at other ways to honor UK pros in the practice facility moving forward.
Still, the visual is striking to anyone who’s spent much time in that gym over the past decade. And featuring team success over individual achievements certainly aligns with the message Pope has been sending this offseason.
In an interview with the Herald-Leader shortly after he took the job, the new coach — a captain on UK’s 1996 national title team — was asked if there would be any “nonstarters” on the recruiting trail.
“If a player can’t see something bigger than himself, he’s not my guy,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Pope expounded on that declaration by saying that he and his staff would be looking for players who want to form connections on the court, first and foremost. Individual accolades, he said, would follow.
That’s not altogether different from Calipari’s messaging. The Hall of Fame coach — now entering his first season at Arkansas — often preached personal sacrifice for the nine months or so that his best recruits were expecting to be on campus. But that message was always with the understanding that the NBA draft would be waiting for them at the end of the season.
And many would argue that some of Calipari’s lineup decision-making during some of those seasons seemed based more in putting individuals in the best positions for June rather than putting the team in the best position to win in January and February.
Calipari ultimately had 50 draft picks in 15 years as Kentucky’s coach. Half of them were lottery picks. His teams, of course, won just one national championship, and the program is now going on its 10th year without a trip to the Final Four.
A change from Calipari’s “players first” narrative has already popped up on the recruiting trail.
Fueger said the message to players in the transfer portal this spring was this: “Hey guys, our goal is to win No. 9. That’s our goal. If that’s the most important thing for you, come here.”
He said they “lost a lot of guys” because of it.
Pope made it clear from the beginning that he expects to land McDonald’s All-Americans and turn them into one-and-done players in his time here. That rundown of UK offers reflects it, with No. 1 overall recruit AJ Dybantsa still on the wish list and other top-10 prospects firmly on the radar.
“We’re gonna get pros,” Fueger told the Herald-Leader.
But the Cats will also cast a relatively wider net.
One of the first games Pope attended during opening day of the initial July evaluation period last week featured 3-point specialist Braylon Mullins (the No. 23 recruit in the 2025 rankings) and central Kentucky center Malachi Moreno (No. 25 on that list).
Both players have already visited Lexington on Pope’s watch, and he’s clearly placed them among his 2025 priorities. Mullins, from Indiana — and coveted by the home-state Hoosiers — looks like a perfect fit for Pope’s style. Moreno — a star at nearby Great Crossing High School — knows what UK basketball is all about and just so happens to be one of the most skilled big men in the country.
Mullins has scheduled a return trip to Lexington for an official visit in the fall. Moreno is likely to be a regular presence around the team in the coming months, and UK is already considered the favorite in his recruitment.
Before Fueger talked about prioritizing skill and shooting ability, he took the question about what Kentucky coaches were looking for on the recruiting trail in another direction.
“Right now, it’s just what kind of person they are. That’s super important to us,” Fueger said. “Because being connected in college basketball is everything. And there’s a lot of kids out there that don’t want to be a great teammate. They want this, they want that. Their parents are worried about this — they’re worried about the wrong things. But, for us, that’s the most important thing.”
As he continued with that thought, Fueger looked down at his chest, tapping the interlocking UK on his shirt.
“And we want guys where — you put this logo on, it really means something. Every morning, I look down at the logo, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m still wearing it.’ It’s awesome. And that’s what we want these players to feel. Because it’s special. Coming into our locker room is special. Being able to shoot in that gym is special. Every single part — we feel about Kentucky — is special. And we want guys that feel that, too.”
