What's Mark Pope looking for as he builds his first Kentucky roster? He tells us the plan.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Still less than two weeks removed from a Rupp Arena coronation that caught the attention of the entire college basketball world, Mark Pope has been a busy man.

Meeting with recruits and their families. Showing potential transfers around Keeneland. Spreading the gospel of Kentucky basketball on national TV shows. Driving to and from Blue Grass Airport. Making phone calls.

Oh, so many phone calls.

That’s been a typical day in the life of UK’s new coach since he arrived in town two weekends ago. When Pope stepped onto the podium in Rupp Arena on April 14 — two days after he was officially announced as the next leader of the Wildcats — a frenzied crowd hung on every word.

Pope hit all the right notes, and he closed his remarks that day by saying that he’d be hitting the phones that night. After all, when he stepped off the stage that Sunday afternoon, he had exactly zero players fully committed to his first Kentucky roster.

It was time to get to work.

Pope took some time out of his hectic schedule Tuesday to speak with the Herald-Leader about his efforts to put together a formidable team for the 2024-25 season and lay the foundation for the type of program he wants to lead into the next era of UK basketball.

He said in those closing comments at the ceremony in Rupp that potential recruits had been reacting differently to his initial calls as Kentucky’s coach — after spending the past nine seasons as head coach at Utah Valley and then BYU — and he was looking forward to the conversations in the coming days and weeks as he pieced together his first roster.

That wonder hasn’t worn off.

“It’s actually fun,” Pope said of the seemingly endless series of calls. “Listen, every time I get to say, ‘Hey, this is Coach Pope from the University of Kentucky’ — it’s thrilling for me. And, I think, for a lot of the kids that we talk to, it’s thrilling for them also. You think of Kentucky — especially in the recruiting game — you think of it as the pinnacle of basketball, right?”

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