Mark Pope's coaching history and record: New Kentucky HC's career explored

The Kentucky Wildcats have hired the BYU Cougars coach, Mark Pope, to take over the program after the departure of John Calipari. This will be interesting as he was also a former player in the program. However, Pope has shown the ability to coach at a solid level for the last decade as a head coach.

Here, let's take a deeper dive into Pope's coaching career.

What has Mark Pope done as a coach?

Mark Pope is entering his 10th season as a head coach at the college basketball Division I level. He began his career with the Utah Valley Wolverines ahead of the 2015-16 season and continued to improve in all four seasons, where he improved the team's record each season.

He left after the 2018-19 season and took over at the BYU Cougars program to replace Dave Rose as he retired. The team did incredibly well in Pope's first season, but the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pope won 20+ games in his first three seasons, including making a 2021 NCAA Tournament appearance and the NIT Quarterfinals in the 2022 bracket. The Cougars failed to make the postseason in the 2022-23 season and bounced back with a 23-11 record this last season.

They made the NCAA Tournament as a sixth seed in the East Region but were defeated by the Duquesne Dukes 71-67.

Mark Pope's record as a head coach

Mark Pope has been doing pretty well as a coach throughout his career and below is the table breaking it down by year. He has gone 187-108 (.634 win percentage) in his coaching career and below is a breakdown of each season.

Year	Team	Record	Postseason
2015-16	Utah Valley	12-18
2016-17	Utah Valley	17-17	CBI Semifinals
2017-18	Utah Valley	23-11	CBI Quarterfinals
2018-19	Utah Valley	25-10	CBI Quarterfinals
2019-20	BYU	24-8
2020-21	BYU	20-7	NCAA Tournament Round of 64
2021-22	BYU	24-11	NIT Quarterfinals
2022-23	BYU	19-15
2023-24	BYU	23-11	NCAA Tournament Round of 64

While Pope has done well throughout his career, going 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament could be seen as a red flag. However, he has never had a talent pool to the level that Kentucky has.